


Forged by Moonlight

by Oruka



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nobody Goes to Space, F/M, Food, Implied Sexual Content, Inaccurate Motorcycle Terminology, M/M, Slow Burn, Unnecessarily Long Landscape Descriptions, Whose Ship Is It Anyway, pet death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 23:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11656701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oruka/pseuds/Oruka
Summary: Whilst out on assignment to a coastal town, location scout Shiro finds himself taking an unexpected holiday for the first time since... Well. But with all this beautiful scenery and interesting new acquaintances to keep him occupied, why does the light on the hill catch his eye? There's something going on, and these three boys are keeping a tight lid on it, but is it simply a childhood secret, or could something dangerous be moving in the dark?





	1. Chapter 1

  
  


It happened to Jeanette Taylor on a ghastly Monday morning. The kids were screaming, the rain was falling in sideways off the sea, and bills upon bills had flooded the doormat.

On Saturday night, her car had been stolen. It was a cranky old banger, a gas guzzler with a tricky gearbox. She’d hated every last rivet and fuse, but it had been her only means of getting the children halfway across town to school. It had been a lifeline to the outside world.

She’d reported it stolen. The desk sergeant had smiled his sympathy as she’d bounced her youngest on her knee, but there was little she could expect. Cars that went missing from Estrella City were never found. 

But their owners might occasionally meet an interesting fate.

Such as what happened to Jeanette.

Among the litter of brown envelopes freshly pupped onto the doormat, there was a pair of keys. A pair of keys, with a little brown parcel tag attached. On the one side was a registration number and the words ‘lavender electric saloon’ in typewriter ink. On the reverse, a few short lines in very fine script:

_ Ms Taylor, _

_ I have acquired your car as it is no longer meeting your requirements and is, to be frank, barely roadworthy. _

_ In its place, please enjoy the use of this car. I am giving it to you. It is now yours. You may charge it for free at the garage at the top of the hill - arrangements have been made to install a charge point at your home, also for free. _

_ Transfer of ownership etc will be appropriately filed and the relevant documentation sent to you immediately. _

_ You do not owe anything in return. Keep your kids safe, enjoy your new car, and have a good life in Estrella. _

_ With love, _

But no name was signed below.

 

Hesitantly, Jeanette shuffled the remaining envelopes to the side of the hall with her foot, fumbled for the latch, and opened the door. Rain hit her full in the face, but there is was, parked at the far end of the front garden, its hubcaps all shiny and its bonnet free of dents and rust. There was even a bright white ribbon tied around the steering wheel. In place of her knackered old runabout there was a brand new electric Coda Saloon.

In custom lavender paint.

Her wife’s favourite colour.

  
  
  


Hunk filed the paperwork and slid the drawer home with approval.

“Another good deed, done and done.”

“Huh,” his partner replied, and shifted his weight so that a few more bits of paper flutter to the floor.

“You really enjoyed that one, though.”

“I did, but I’m not a sanctimonious ass about what a nice person I am, Hunk.”

“I enjoy being a nice guy.”

“And I like playing with welding gear, let’s not get carried away.”

Keith slid off the edge of Hunk’s antique desk with a fluid laziness and stepped over to the window, taking up a seat on the sill instead. The views from the top of town were terrific, and he should know; the only buildings higher up than Hunk’s offices were the observatory and his own garage. Even this morning, with the weather trying to wash the town away, it was a good view.

“See,” Hunk said behind him, “you’re already looking for your next good deed.”

“You’re the one who finances them, they’re your charity cases, Hunk.”

“They’re my people, Keith. They deserve some kindness.”

“Buy ‘em all a plane ticket to Miami, then.”

Hunk scoffed and batted at Keith with a new sheaf of paper, but did come to stand beside him at the window.

“Seriously. That was a real good deed to a family right at the edge. I’m proud of you, man.”

“It was my pleasure, as always” Keith replied, deeply sincere. “I… I didn’t wanna hear them having to choose between petrol and cereal ever again.”

“So you gave them an electric car.” There was a smile in Hunk’s voice. Genuine fondness. “Is that how you pick them? You stalk the checkouts at Costco?”

“I eavesdrop on gossip. I notice who shops where, and what they buy, and how happy they look afterwards.” Keith shifted, folding his arms against the wet weather, even though Hunk’s office was pleasantly warm. “I choose people who deserve… a big dose of happiness.”

When he turned to look at Hunk, his eyes were clear and fierce, and not for the first time, Hunk could feel the cosmos bearing down on him.

“I only do one thing, but I do it really well. I mend cars. I—” He gestured between the two of them, “— _ we _ give people wheels. I’m not from here. Maybe that means I’m best placed to give other people a whole new view of their world.” Once again he slipped onto his feet, an easy grace for one with such a bony frame. As he moved to take his leave, Keith paused in the doorway.

“But you know, she’s a wonderful planet, Hunk. I wouldn’t want to leave, even if I could.”

  
  


This planet was a bitch.

Fuck everything.

Fuck this weather, fuck this car, fuck this fucking assignment.

Shiro slammed his foot against the hubcap and winced, forgetting he no longer wore steel toes as standard.

What a bastard set of wheels, what an absolute pile of junk.

Brand new his entire ass. Weatherproof soft-top his left fucking testicle.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and after fighting the rain for control of the touchscreen, sent a snapchat to Sendak of his broken down company car, elegantly posed against the misty landscape, with the distant township below, the sea in the distance, with the steam billowing from her bonnet and the white text on a black bar:

_ Wish you were here instead, you dick. _

Then he hurled his phone into the abyss, and after five seconds of righteous yelling at the heartless sky, had to go scrambling down the scrubby hillside to retrieve it.

Shiro looked down at the director’s reply.

“LOL”

He damn near threw his phone again.

At least the rain was warm. He wasn’t freezing, this was just a sub-tropical summer storm. It would pass before the evening and there would probably still be enough sun left to dry his clothes out before bedtime. Not such a bad lot.

He popped the boot to check his luggage.

Which turned out to be soaked through, against all logical reasoning.

Shiro was right on the verge of chucking his phone, suitcase, and body all down the mountain when the phone rang in his hand, a bouncy little tune he was all too familiar with, but had no memory of installing.

“Hi, Pidge. How’s life on dry land?”

“Oh, you getting rained on? I did warn ya.”

“Did you warn the boss too?”

“Nope. Where you at right now?”

_ Up to my waist in bad luck and bad weather, _ Shiro thought, but he snapped another photo of the car and its backdrop, and sent it to his friend.

“Nice. That humidity will do wonders for your beauty regime.”

“I can feel my arm rusting already. Pidge, is there any way you can get me out of here?”

He could hear her humming, tapping away at one of the many keyboards that constantly littered her personal space.

“I’ve got your position from the cell tower ping, triangulating your precise location from the picture…”

“I’m on the A419 Northeast of Estrella. There’s a milestone here that says ‘9’ if that helps.”

“Oh! So you’re not too lost then. I’ll make a couple of phone calls, should get someone out to you in… less than thirty minutes. Okay?”

“You’re a blessing, Pidge,” Shiro hoped his smile conveyed through his voice.

“I know, right? Hooray for me!”

“So was there a reason behind your call or do you just have a sixth sense for when I’m suffering?”

“Bit of both, I was watching the weather maps. … There’s been a change in schedule.”

Shiro sighed, tipping his head back and letting the rain fall directly onto his face.

“Who got fired this time?”

“Would you believe he fired Antok?”

“How— how did he manage to fire Antok? Sendak can barely dress  _ himself _ without Antok!”

“Can’t say I know the specifics but he fired Antok, then the entire prop and costume department walked. He’s having serious trouble finding anyone willing to take their place.”

Not surprising, Antok was very well connected and very well liked, and Sendak was famously abrasive. It was possible that someone could mediate and get Antok back on the team, but it would take an awful lot of persuading to get Sendak to bend his knee in apology.

“So does this mean I can actually have a real holiday for once?”

“Seems like it. But keep your eyes peeled, we’re gonna need our location scout back before too long.”

“Right.”

“Okay? I’m gonna make that phone call.”

“Cheers, Pidge.”

“Love ya, Shiro.”

The dead tone sounded too quiet against the rain. Resigned to his fate for the day, Shiro hauled his small suitcase and laptop bag out of the car and sloped off to rest under a tree. It wasn’t much, but it did give him some shelter as he watched rainwater pool on the car’s roof until it collapsed. Very satisfying, that.

“Act of god,” he muttered to himself, pulling off his tie. Then he stripped out of his plain white shirt and dragged a washed-out black tee out of his sodden luggage. It wasn’t any drier, it wasn’t any more comfortable, but at least, for the first time in what felt like his entire life, he wasn’t at work for anybody.

  
  


And so Pidge called a friend in Estrella, who handed the phone over the bar to their friend, who used a second phone and called a third man while still on the phone with Pidge, and a rescue was dispatched within two minutes of her call to Shiro.

Shiro heard it coming. No other traffic had come this way all day, so the bass rumble of a motor coming up the hill was impossible to miss. The rain had started to let up, pretty little cracks of light appearing on the far horizon, not quite enough to make the road twinkle yet, but promising to do something soon.

It sounded like three motorbikes strapped together. It turned out to be a motor tricycle with long chopper handlebars and possibly the world’s smallest biker, covered top to toe in patched and mismatched leathers. Shiro stood as the trike rolled to a halt between him and the car, and the rider hopped off and pried the still-steaming hood open, and started making gestures towards the engine as though they were very disappointed in its behaviour of late.

They flipped up their tinted visor as Shiro approached, and made no bones about it.

“Your car is dead as dicks, sir.”

“I’m not exactly mourning it.”

He had a pale face, inside that helmet. It crinkled in amusement.

“A friend of a friend called you in. Get your stuff in the trunk and hop on, we’ll have you back to civilisation in no time. Can’t say the same for this pile of junk.” He slammed the hood shut with relish and moved to undo the clasp on one of the bike’s luggage compartments. “Where you staying?”

“The Garret Hotel. What about the car?”

“It’s not going anywhere fast. I’ll bring the truck up later.” He gestured emphatically at the trike and Shiro hurried to load his bags. As Shiro climbed up into the passenger seat, a helmet was thrust into his arms. Suddenly, it gave Shiro pause.

“No helmet, no ride,” the man said as he straddled the motor and pulled his own visor down.

Shiro put it on. No need to worry. He was in safe hands, probably. Civilian, at least. It was a road trike, much more reliable. And he  _ had _ been wearing a helmet the last time, that’s probably the only reason he was still…

…Well.

The ride down the meandering mountain roads into the bay of Estrella was pleasant, and only improved with the weather. Either the mist burned off or they dropped below some secondary cloud layer, because they took one gentle curve in the road and passed from dense, wet woodland into sunny, regimental vineyards, and suddenly the town was only a stone’s throw away. Then they were climbing again, up and over the hill behind town and around, back into fog so dense that they were forced to slow right down and use the headlamps, and then gently down once more, and now they were approaching the town from the other side.

At the crest of the hill they passed what looked like a windfarm but turned out to be a garage, and then there was the steep, wiggling ladder down into the town proper, the houses starting out tiny but lovingly kept, growing bigger as they descended the hill, turning into five- or six-storey townhouses with huge, overflowing gardens. The weather cleared, and Shiro was so relaxed, he was ready and willing to be driven right into the sea and just lie there, bathing in warm water. Just as they made it onto the seafront, the driver turned through an archway and into an old-fashioned coaching inn courtyard, and pulled up so close to the entrance that Shiro could step off the bike and straight into the porch.

He could hear a conversation approaching as he struggled with the straps on the helmet, and freed himself just as a well-dressed, broad young man stepped out of the door, trying to politely shove his companion back out of sight.

“Mr Shirogane? I’m Hunk Garret, welcome.”

“Oh, uh. Yes, hello.” It had been a while since he’d had to do this sort of thing, he was mostly a solitary, background kind of guy. He placed the helmet back on his seat and then hesitantly looked at his now empty hands.

It would be rude to offer his left hand, but his right hand was technically not part of his body…

The problem solved itself as the companion pushed forward and reached for his right arm with almost spiritual reverence, lifting it gently in both hands and turning it over like a seashell.

“Wow, Hunk, look! It’s really real! Hey, answer me a thing, do you get it painted for the camera or do you have a more sort of fleshy coloured one? Or like, a glove to wear?”

Shiro stared at him. This was new. The other two were watching him, clearly amused. Hunk Garret was smiling; the biker, still helmeted, chuckling enough to make his shoulders shake. Shiro turned his hand and wiggled his robotic fingers, fascinated in it for the first time in over a year. The face of his inspector lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Dude that’s fucking  _ wicked! _ Can you do this?”

He held his hand up, fingers to the sky, rigid.

Shiro did likewise. He spotted the incoming high-five just in time and let his arm fly back under the force. The sharp  _ clap _ resounded around the courtyard and sent a flock of sparrows skittering out of the eaves.

“Awesome!” The young man leaped clean off the ground in delight. “Alright!”

“Oh my god Lance, could you please just not, for maybe forty seconds? You’re embarrassing me.”

“Dude this is the guy!” Lance turned and beamed at Hunk, picking up Shiro’s arm and wiggling it like a flag, “ _ The _ Shirogane! For real!”

“And you’re treating him like an action figure!”

They reminded him of Pidge and her family. They were all so freaking  _ energetic.  _ And this one, a total stranger, was whooping and cheering about his godsforsaken prosthesis, as though he was a… a what?

“Man, you have got to be my  _ favourite _ movie star!” Lance beamed up at him, eyes twinkling with genuine delight.

“Lance for the love of god, will you shut up and let him inside? Or go back to your own work? I’m sure there are plenty of people there for you to infuriate instead.”

“Right! Right.” Lance stepped around Shiro as though admiring a statue and approached the bike, hailing its driver with a cheerful  _ what’s up, you mysterious bastard? _

Hunk shook Shiro’s hand like a normal person, and held the door open with an apologetic smile.

“He’s fun,” Shiro murmured as Hunk relieved him of his sodden bags and led the way.

“He wants to be a mermaid when he grows up. I don’t know which part is less likely, growing up or growing a tail. But he  _ is _ fun.”

  
  


Lance was fun. He was cheerful and welcoming. He knew everyone in town, and everyone knew him. And, as Keith was reminded on the drive over to the bar, he gossiped like a champ.

“—And  _ Marie _ says that Ruby fancies  _ Jake, _ but  _ Jake  _ claims he’s already dating  _ Tanisha—” _

_ “ _ Tanisha is the one with the k-pop obsession, right?”

“Right! She’s—”

“She’s married to Adel Jones, they have three kids.”

“ _ NO!” _

_ “ _ I did a house call for them not three weeks ago. Cute kids. Nice cat.”

“Keith, you are _killing_ _me!”_

_ “ _ A seal point—”

“ _ Keith!” _

Lance dismounted with a groan before Keith had even pulled up to a stop.

“Man, I hate being the bearer of bad news. This had better not mess up his performance, he’s the best gelato man in town!”

Keith stepped out of the saddle and followed Lance into the dim little bar. Not yet open, with chairs up on the tables and some recent pop hit quietly softening the atmosphere, it was Hunk’s building, Lance’s business, and Keith’s favourite place to scrounge a free meal. He took off his helmet and stepped behind the bar as though he belonged there.

“No alcohol unless you’re walking home,” Lance called from the back room.

“You know I don’t drink, asshole.”

But nobody was going to deny him a Virgin Mary right now.

A hatch in the floor opened a minute later and Lance emerged from it, hauling on a rope.

“So who was that guy?” Keith asked, officially adding too much tabasco to his glass. “You seemed pretty hot for him.”

“Shirogane! I forget his full name, I think he’s just called Shiro in the industry? He’s a stuntman! Or he was.”

“What happened?”

“A… stunt?”

“Fascinating.”

“And he knows Pidge, you know? Katie Holt from college? Could— could you give me a hand, buddy?” Lance was starting to wheeze.

Keith took a slow drink from his glass before coming to join Lance at the cellar hatch. Together they hauled the first keg up the ramp, then Keith hopped down into the cool, damp atmosphere and brought the next two kegs up by himself.

“You’re still feeling that pneumonia, aren’t you?” he asked as Lance drew a glass of cold water from the tap. “You should still be resting.”

“It’s just a cold, I’m fine,” he gasped.

“I think you’re very good at pretending to be fine. See a doctor.”

“Ugh, okay  _ mom _ . … don’t tell Hunk?”

Keith watched, hands in his pockets as Lance downed the entire glass and refilled it.

“Why not?”

“He’s got enough on his plate playing at Mayor. I don’t want him worrying about me, too.”

“He worries about you anyway, you’re his best friend.”

Lance continued drinking his water, but couldn’t quite meet Keith’s gaze any more. Lance’s little bout with illness had shaken all three of them, more than they’d ever admit. The taste of the medicine had put Lance completely off mint and chamomile. Hunk had made him swear never to go night swimming alone again, and Keith had started spending more of his free time helping Lance in little, unofficial ways. Like just handily being there when large things needed moving, or when he needed a lift across town.

Which was a bother, but an awful lot easier than when Hunk had called on him in the middle of the night, screaming in panic, Lance choking on his own lungs as they filled with phlegm and water, and he’d broken six traffic violations as he rushed the three of them to hospital, two towns over.

He’d nearly been found out. The hoverbike was hardly inconspicuous.

Worse, Lance had nearly passed away in their arms.

Everyone liked Lance. Even when he was impulsive and egocentric, it was almost impossible to hate him. The Mayor at the time had approved Hunk’s proposal to fund a bigger, better clinic. Hunk’s determined work in improving the clinic and resurfacing the local A-road network had bumped him up from councillor to deputy, and he won the Mayoral election by a massive eighty-six percent landslide, the youngest Mayor in the history of Estrella.

All because he wanted to do right by Lance. Funny, he had that effect on people.

“I won’t tell him. But for the record, I worry about you too.”

“Yeah, but. You’re… you know. Stoic. Hunk’s a broody hen.”

“Stoic?” There was a minute’s pause while Keith brought up the definition on his phone.

“Unshakeable,” Lance provided, “like you never show fear or let on if you’re hurting.”

“Hm. Says here it means ‘porch’ in Greek.”

“ _ What?” _

  
  
  


Shiro was positive he hadn’t booked such a luxurious suite, but Hunk had given him one anyway, with a bed the size of his entire flat, a side room with a cocktail bar and jacuzzi tub, a terrace, and what promised to be a fantastic view of the bay, once the weather had cleared. Hunk had handed him a room key and a door key, invited him to join dinner at six but warned him not to dress for it, and left him to it.

If this was a coaching inn then he was a blueberry. This was a  _ palace. _

And how was he going to dress down for dinner anyway? All his clothes were ruined.

At least he could shower and warm up. If he had to wear a bathrobe for the next couple of days while his laundry was done, he couldn’t say he minded. The concept of a regular work/holiday balance had been something he’d given up on the moment he fell from the…

...Well.

He unclipped the upper casings of his prosthesis and disengaged the whole thing, leaving it on the bed while he went to take a shower.

When he returned, a neat pile of folded clothes was laying next to his metal arm, with a note asking him to place laundry for cleaning in a basket by the door. There was also a sweet that looked like a mint but turned out to be some sort of lemon truffle, very refreshing. He wondered if he could ask for some more, Pidge and Allura would love them. Matt would do  _ flips _ , he was a devil for unusual sweets.

The clothes looked like a perfect fit. They weren’t fancy, just very well made. New denim jeans and a pair of dark grey cotton pants. A dove-grey short sleeved shirt, a black tee that wasn’t totally worn to shreds like his own, one long-sleeved top made of soft mauve jersey, a second one in charcoal. Plain black socks, plain black boxer-briefs, plain black boots that looked like army surplus. A slightly too-large sweater that looked hand-knit, again in a soft, tweedy grey.

Someone had noticed he wore boots, and gauged his shoe size.

Someone very observant, possibly clairvoyant, had worked out what his wardrobe generally looked like.

And someone  _ extremely _ curious had been investigating his arm. It had moved two feet along the bed, but on inspection no damage had been done. Shiro extracted his little toolkit from his suitcase and took it and the limb over to sit by the window, where he spent the first free half hour of his recent life happily, quietly cleaning it, piece by piece.

  
  
  


When he stepped into the lobby at three minutes past six, he almost didn’t recognise the young man who hailed him. Hunk had swapped his fine raw linen suit out and immediately looked ten years younger in cargo pants and a tee. He still wore the polite smile and demeanour of a hotel manager, but it was clear that he was seconds away from going off-duty.

He surprised Shiro by guiding him not to the dining room, but out of the front door and away down the seafront.

“Hope you don’t mind the walk. How’s your room?”

“Oh, it’s better than I booked, for sure.  _ Someone  _ has been messing with my personal effects already, though.”

“...Yeah, sorry. That was me.” Hunk had the decency to blush about it. “But it’s so  _ fascinating! _ I did aeronautical engineering at college, you don’t lose that passion in a hurry. Who made it?”

“A friend, a doctor. She specialises in bionic engineering.”

“I’d love to meet her!”

“Everyone does. Where are we going?”

It was warm out. The afternoon sun had finally burned off the mist and rain, and the moisture hung heavy in the air, humid but pleasant. The ground was twinkling now, the image of the sun stretched out in ripples across the bay. The forest Shiro had been stranded in lay behind them to the East. Before them in the West, the hills were soft and grassy, flocks of sheep just visible through the evening haze. It was the kind of place where you could go to sleep for a hundred years, and not give a damn as the world carried on around you.

“Dinner tonight is on me. We’re going to  _ Violetta, _ the chef there is the best in the world.”

“Oh? What makes you so sure of that?”

“I’m cooking.”

Shiro laughed.

“No, really. I am. It’s just in here--”

 

It wasn’t a big place. It looked like a former tavern, small windows and wonky wooden floors, a ceiling so low that Shiro bumped into a beam more than once, but it was welcoming in a very old-time kind of way. Hunk barrelled in as though he was coming home and vanished into the kitchen, leaving Shiro feeling slightly abandoned in a pub so old that it still smelled of smuggling. A little nervous, he tried to take in his surroundings with a view to his work brief, but this wasn’t Mediterranean enough for Sendak’s precious  _ vision.  _ He settled on pulling on his shirtsleeves as he inspected the paintings on the walls, listening as Hunk’s clear voice rattled off instructions in the kitchen.

“Lemons, pot herbs, peas or young beans, sweet potatoes - no, salad potatoes won’t do. Can we get cream at this time of day? Will you try? Dabs if you can get them, mackerel if not, dill weed and chervil. Oh, and grab some samphire! I  _ know  _ you don’t like it, I don’t give a damn. Keith, get your cats  _ out of here I swear to god _ \--”

 

The young man Shiro remembered as Lance came blasting out of the kitchen in a hurry, waving wildly at Shiro as he made for the door and legged it back towards town. A second later, a boy glided past on rollerblades, pursued by four very stray-looking cats. He gave Shiro a passing glance and a small smile, but nothing more, and set off in the opposite direction, and Shiro was left alone again until Hunk reappeared behind the bar.

“Any allergies? Should have asked first, but...”

“Sorry? Oh, no. Can I do anything to help?”

“Until they come back all I need to do is prep the grill and boil water. Would you like a drink?”

 

Hunk wiped down a patio table and they sat outside, taking in the coastal view as Hunk very obviously tried not to ask about the arm. Eventually, Shiro took pity on him and volunteered,

“Platinum-coated. Wanna see?”

“Oh please! I mean, if that’s okay. ...Is that sanitary?” he asked as Shiro promptly started to unclip it, fumbling against his new clothes.

“Depends how clean your bar is, Mr Garret.”

“Well, this is Lance’s bar really, but his mother didn’t raise any slobs. Man, this is just  _ the coolest thing!” _

Lance had merely been excited. Hunk was in awe, and he spent the next fifteen minutes talking expansively about servos and alloy plating, marvelling at the delicate wiring and the smooth interlocking plates and the silicone padding that made the shape seem more natural under clothing.

“Provides some shock protection, too. I don’t do that kind of work any more, but I am accident-prone. It helps.”

“Incredible! This isn’t any run-of-the-mill prosthetic, is it?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s super-advanced. You’ve got to be very rich to afford this kind of work.”

“Not rich. Just willing to be the first. My doctor needed a guinea pig and I was the first one on the slab that day, She saved my life, in more ways than one.”

“Sounds like an incredible woman.”

“Oh, yeah,” Shiro said with a broad smile, “She’s heavenly.”

“Who’s cute?” asked a voice, approaching at speed, “Am I cute? Is it me?”

Shiro just managed to rescue his drink from being knocked over as Lance threw himself into Hunk’s orbit, panting. Hunk’s drink wasn’t so lucky.

“Tell me I’m cute!”

“You’re literally a pain in the ass,” Hunk grunted as Lance came to land in his lap.

“Not mutually exclusive, therefore I’m still cute. Oh man, can I have a look too? Please!”

Lance slid a basket full of paper-wrapped goodies toward Hunk and made grabby hands at the prosthetic. Hunk looked at Shiro. Shiro just shrugged, it was clearly going to be that kind of day all round.

“Don’t worry,” Hunk said soothingly, tipping Lance onto a seat of his own. “He’s not an engineer but he is respectful. He just… He’s got the scientist’s heart.”

“Makes up for having the toddler’s brain, right? But this is - this is a beautiful piece of work! Hunk have you ever  _ seen _ overlapping plates this smooth? So tiny!” He wiggled a finger like a cat batting at a dead mouse. “Keith is going to have a fit, he’s going to steal your arm for science and build a motorbike out of it.”

A quiet voice behind Shiro sounded insulted.

“I don’t steal, Lance.” A second basket was placed on the table beside the one Hunk was already inspecting. “And I’m not into building motors right now anyway. I’m Keith,” he added, pulling a chair out and sitting down. “Sorry I never introduced myself, Mr Shirogane. I was your driver.”

“Shiro, please.”

“Shiro,” Keith said, and smiled. “For your hair?”

And it gave Shiro pause. Keith had a soft, eyes half-closed smile that Shiro immediately wanted to see again and again. It wasn’t until Hunk coughed politely that he realised he was staring. Lance was staring, too, but with a grin on his face that was a clear prelude to trouble. Shiro made sure to take his prosthetic back, before it could be corrupted by Lance’s grasp.

“Uh… no, but good guess. It’s just… short for Shirogane. I never use my given name.”

“Which is?”

“Takashi.” Why was he divulging this? They didn’t need to know this. His screen credits never listed him as Takashi, not even his own family called him Takashi. He didn’t even think of  _ himself _ as Takashi, it was just a word on his passport.

“Good name. Very... noble.”

Mouth gaping, Shiro turned to his increasingly apologetic host.

“Have you put some sort of truth serum in my drink, Hunk?”

“No, promise. Just good gin and vermouth. Keith is an information junkie.”

“A hungry one,” Keith said with a pointed drawl.

“Point taken.  _ Keith _ is going to keep you company because he’s been running around after me all day,  _ Lance _ is going to  _ behave himself _ and help me in the kitchen.” Hunk stood, took the two baskets of gathered ingredients, and disappeared into the dark inner sanctum of the bar.

“Sure thing,” Lance said, rising after Hunk and following him back indoors, pointedly closing the doors behind him, that devilish grin still riding on his face.

Shiro immediately snapped back to look at Keith.

“Exactly how much Japanese  _ do _ you speak?”

  
  
  


Keith’s knowledge of Japanese wasn’t actually that great. He’d loved Japanese cartoons and movies as a kid, and taught himself a fair bit in his early teens, but hadn’t had much reason to carry on with it academically.

“But I was slow to speak as a kid, I guess that’s why I care so much now. I love words, languages, I like learning new meanings, and the history of names and phrases…”

“So you’re a linguist?”

“Please, I’m a backwater mechanic moonlighting as a courier and emergency taxi service, I eat jerky for two meals a day and I sleep on a sofa between jobs. I don’t have enough time for academia. Wish I still did, but you know. Life takes you places.”

“What would you have been?”

“Fighter pilot.”

“No way!”

But he had failed a critical medical, and was, technically, an undocumented migrant. Despite consistently being top of the class, the military wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole, and so he had left that world behind.

“Hunk and Lance too. Different reasons, but we all dropped out of the Garrison Academy in our final cadet year and came back here. And we haven’t left since.”

“Do you want to?”

“No! Not ever! I’m not even leaving this place in a hearse.”

“That’s… kind of sad, to be honest.”

“Maybe. But there’s nothing out there for me. At least in this place I’m welcome, and I can do some good.” He leaned back, tilting his chair up on two legs and resting his knee against the edge of the table. “And I like it. It's peaceful here. So why are you in town?”

“For work. I’m a location scout, I heard Estrella was just the kind of town I was looking for, so I came to take photos, have a look around, you know.”

“For a movie?”

“If all goes well. The director is a very-- how do I put this politely? He’s… a very mercurial artiste.”

“He’s an indecisive douchebag.”

“Oh, you’ve met him then.”

Keith laughed again, face creasing at a simple entertainment, and at that moment Shiro got stuck. They must have talked a while longer because when he next looked up, the ice in his glass had melted and Lance had brought out a fresh drink for them all. They had talked, but gods knew what they’d talked about because all Shiro could remember from their discussion was Keith’s expressions. Hunk was yelling from the kitchen and having Lance run back and forth with tableware, and some cats had appeared out of nowhere and had taken up perches on the empty tables nearby, watching with studied interest as something delicious emerged into the open air.

“I realised as I was making it, it's just glorified fish and chips,” Hunk apologised as he set a steaming, overflowing plate before each of their seats. “But I mean, it's  _ good _ fish and chips, so…”

It smelled fantastic. Pan fried dabs and chunky sweet potato chips, peas cooked with herbs, mysterious steamed greens, fresh salad. Nothing fancy, but generous and beautifully presented. Shiro took a moment to enjoy its appearance while Lance and Keith almost yelled a high-speed grace and dug in. Automatically, Shiro reached for his phone and took a photo of his plate.

“Oh, you're one of  _ those _ people,” Lance said between mouthfuls.

“Part of the job, I'm afraid.” He turned the camera on the two of them and took a flurry of quick shots, Lance sticking out his tongue and Keith trying not to look like he knew this infant. He slid his phone back into his pocket as Hunk took a seat opposite.

“Buen provecho, Shiro. Hope you like it.”

“My compliments to the chef, this looks great,” Shiro said, raising his glass. “Your good health!”

 

The meal was incredible. But even better, the boys had a strict ‘no shop talk’ policy at the dinner table, so he was allowed to enjoy his meal in relative peace as Lance, and it was mostly Lance, picked holes in a thriller series they were watching together. Hunk had been right, Lance  _ was _ fun, and despite playing up his role as the dumb one of the group, he was razor sharp and very perceptive, not a natural academic, perhaps, but a very hard worker with a thirst for self-improvement. He was aggressively refuting the cause of a major character death, with reference to practical astrophysics and Newton’s laws of motion, and got so caught up in it that both Hunk and Keith were able to steal all the chips off his plate without him noticing, though Hunk did look guilty and slide a few back. People started to emerge onto the street as the work day ended, and the staff arrived to open up publicly, greeting Lance with cheerful waves and smiles as they set up braziers and tables for the evening crowd. He was a very physical talker, whipping his fork around to point at the universe with alarming speed as he tried to get the others to join in.

“I'm not saying Chelly should have survived, I'm saying she should have died  _ on impact, see?  _ Even if her visor hadn’t cracked, her bones would still have liquefied. _ ” _

Eventually, Keith took the bait, with a tone of voice that suggested he knew this would come back to bite him in the end.

“A plot device is a plot device though, the rest of the crew had to be made aware of the threat.”

“So why leave her alive for two episodes?”

“I dunno, to make us think it was possible for her to survive? Ramp up the tension, make her death emotional rather than shocking? Plus she was a fan favourite and keeping her alive meant they could tie up Rhonda’s character arc.”

“No way, she should have been pancaked in episode four,  _ splat, _ not laid out in flowers--”

“Man you have got to learn to suspend your disbeli--”

“I know it’s just a show don’t you  _ start on me Kogane I will--” _

Hunk pushed his chair back with a loud scrape. Silence fell.

“Dessert will be fresh fruit with lemon sorbet and a side of shut the hell up. Everybody say yes please.”

The petulant chorus of  _ yes please _ from Lance and Keith was adorable. The three of them rose and cleared the table, and the dust had barely settled before they were back and dessert was laid out before Shiro, pristine red berries perched elegantly on three perfect spheres of pastel yellow sorbet.

Compared to the vibrant chatter over the main course, they ate dessert in a comfortable silence. Lance wolfed his sorbet down, then half-turned in his seat to watch the bay, plucking the berries from their stem and eating them one at a time. Keith leaned back and lifted his bowl to his lips, letting a huge ginger tomcat scramble onto his lap, where it sat, flicking its ears and blinking at Shiro as he chased a stray redcurrant around the bottom of his bowl. He’d never had redcurrants before. They were tart, and the sweetness followed after, the flavour lingering on his lips and tongue like a first kiss. Hunk noticed him contemplating the unfamiliar taste and generously tipped a few more of the bright little jewels into Shiro’s bowl.

“Gotta get home soon,” Keith said with a sigh. “Only an hour til sundown, got outdoors work to finish up.” But he made no effort to move, only continued scratching at his lap cat’s neck.

“Keith’s scared of the dark,” Lance said quietly, still looking out to sea. It sounded like a well-used line, as though the phrase came automatically, with no actual input from his brain.

“No I’m not,” Keith replied, just as softly.

“Keith’s scared of the nightlife,” Lance tried, a little more firmly.

Keith didn’t bite this time, but Hunk leaned forward and gave Lance a gentle shove.

“It is your bar, buddy.”

“I deny all knowledge of this place.”

Nobody left their seat for another quarter of an hour, and nobody spoke. It was quiet. It was really nice, not having to talk or think about work. Someone else came and cleared the table around them, other customers drifted in and occupied seats nearby, ordering drinks and meals and chatting with friends. A few fellow regulars greeted the boys by name, but nobody came to bother them. Shiro almost dozed off in his chair, the sea breeze cooling his skin and promising to play hell with his hair. Finally, Keith’s inner clock ran out of time.

“I really have to go, guys. Anyone need a lift?”

Lance shook his head, but Shiro accepted, offering Hunk his hand once more as he stood to take his leave.

“Thanks so much. For the meal, for everything, I don’t even know you and you’ve really made me feel welcome.”

“You  _ are _ welcome. I don’t go back to the hotel after I lose the suit, but I’ll swing by tomorrow if you’re interested, give you a tour of the city?”

“I’d like that.”

“Can I come too?” Lance stifled a yawn as he stood and stretched.

“Lance, you live here.”

“Exactly, I know where all the coolest hangouts are.”

“He’s not-- he’s here for work, not to go looking for hangouts, good grief--”

Shiro left them to it, following Keith and his trail of cats off the patio and into the side-street, where a familiar motor tricycle lay in wait.

“No helmet, no ride, right?”

“That is the law,” Keith confirmed, handing a helmet to him. “If you want the wind in your hair you can borrow a pushbike.”

“Or get some skates?” He pointed to the pair Keith was stashing in the luggage box. “Do you ever walk?”

“Not if I can get there faster,” Keith said, a smirk turning up the corners of his mouth as he pulled his own helmet down over his head.

Most of the cats wandered off as Keith turned the key and brought the engine to life, but a wiry red one hopped up and dug in between Shiro’s legs, tucking their paws up under their chest and looking perfectly at home. He gave it a cautious scratch behind the ear and it leaned into his hand, clearly enjoying the attention.

He wondered if, somewhere, there was a little kitty helmet and seat belt, but Keith just gave the cat a loving pat on the head as he took the saddle, and they pulled away down onto the seafront, into the setting sun.


	2. Chapter 2

Shiro didn’t set an alarm, knowing that his body would automatically wake him after four hours anyway. In the middle of the night and with nothing else to do but wait for the second round of sleep, he half-dressed into sweatpants and a vest, filled a bottle with water, and quietly left for a jog along the seafront.

The town was almost totally dark. Coming from the city and working under artificial light most of his life, it felt unreal, too quiet, unsettling in its deep shades of blue. He kept glancing up whenever he thought he saw light or movement, but most of the time it was no more than the moonlight reflecting off the pitch-black sea. It still gave him chills. He picked up his steps and kept moving.

The hotel behind him had its greeting lamps on, warm little beacons to tempt travellers in, and up ahead, there was still a faint light from Lance’s bar,  _ Violetta, _ a distant pinprick that only showed how long and curved the seashore was. Perhaps Hunk and Lance were still up and partying; Lance certainly seemed the sort, and Hunk was absolutely the mom friend of the three, forever balancing an adventurous heart with a need to keep his friends out of too much trouble.

Shiro realised that if he kept running straight, he would end up back on that patio. A strong instinct told him that his presence would interrupt something, so he peeled away from the seafront and off into the town.

He was lost within moments. It wasn’t a big town, gods only knew how it qualified as a city, but Estrella had grown on the bones of a smugglers’ cove, and its steep streets were a warren, reflecting its secretive past. The seafront and the central Long Rise were apparently the only two straight roads in town, and then only by comparison to the tight, winding lanes and alleys that fanned out from them. Resigned to his fate, Shiro came to a stop where five alleyways met, and checked his tracker app.

Or would have done. His phone was still plugged in to the hotel wall, almost a mile away. Shiro cursed under his breath and turned his head up to the stars, clearly visible through the deep darkness that blanketed the town.

One of the stars sitting low on the hills above winked at him, a flash of rich orange, then piercing white, then out. He stared into the space it had come from. A moment later, it flashed again, glowing a few seconds longer this time, then coming again at a shorter interval. Not a star.

No logical reason presented itself immediately, and the longer Shiro stared at it, the more worrying the intermittent flash of light became, until a voice in the back of his head started whispering,  _ this is either crime or ghosts or aliens, _ and he turned himself around and put the worrisome thing behind him, happily cutting his run far shorter than usual just so he could get back to the seashore, back to the lovely warm hotel as fast as he could.

 

Shiro didn’t set an alarm the second time, either. As soon as he got into his room, he stripped out of his clothes, removed his arm, took a short, cold shower and crawled under the covers, hair still dripping, feeling tired out if not really relaxed, but glad to be somewhere concrete again. The bed was huge, a soft, comfortable island all of his own. He buried himself in the pillows and slowed his breath, keeping in time with the distant breaking of waves until he returned to sleep.

 

When he awoke, the sun was well up, and he was not alone in bed.

 

A great, solid weight pressed down on his chest, and when he raised his head to see, it started to purr.

He never knew cats could get  _ that _ big. It was the size of a spaniel, a great mass of long, bushy black fur, ears almost engulfed by its mane. Two huge yellow eyes stared at him, daring him to move.

He dared.

It growled, showing him the biggest paw he had ever seen on a domestic animal, then went back to purring more aggressively.

“Okay,” Shiro said calmly. “I guess a lie-in is fine, too.”

_ Lie-in, _ said a Pidge-like voice in his head, _ like lion, get it? Come on, you sad old man, laugh, I’m hilarious. _

He laughed, trying not to shake the creature, but failing. It managed to punch him with all four paws as it left his chest in disgust and went to stretch out in the morning sun like a bearskin rug. He must have left the terrace open at some point the day before, because this cat hadn’t come in through the door. Oh well, time to rise and shine. Shiro climbed into his new clothes, avoiding his own reflection in the mirror until he had to, aware the whole while that the cat was watching him. It came over to inspect his boots as he pulled his laces tight.

“Are you one of Keith’s?” He asked, holding out a finger for the cat’s inspection. It sniffed, then pushed its cheek along Shiro’s hand.

“Aw, I think I like you, too. You want breakfast? Yeah?”

The cat chirped and followed him as he stood up, winding itself around Shiro’s legs. Good grief, its shoulders came up to his  _ knees, _ its upright tail brushing at the bottom of his back pockets. It led the way out as he opened the door, stopping at the end of the corridor and waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him to catch up. When Shiro approached the front desk and smiled at the young woman there, the cat leaped into the counter between them and presented them both with a wall of fur.

“Oh my stars, it’s Queenie!” The duty manager leaped up to snare the cat, but it dodged, leaping for Shiro’s shoulders instead, where it stood, arched over his head like an arctic hat and purring like a massage chair.

It weighed a ton.

“Is this normal round here?” Shiro puffed as a tail came across his face, completely obscuring his vision.

“Cats everywhere? Yes, I’m afraid so. Queenie went missing two nights ago.” She looked the animal dead in the face and addressed it directly, “And Keith was out looking for you! In the rain! You better go and apologise!”

“Keith has a thing for cats, huh.” Shiro held the tail away from his face so that he could check the lady’s name tag. “...Ms Shay.”

“Oh, he’s well known for it. This one seems to like you!” She came around the side of the counter and made another grab for Queenie, putting her firmly onto the floor.

“Was she in your room? I’m very sorry, she’s a famous wanderer.”

“I must have left a window open. No harm done.”

“This is very unprofessional…”

“No, no,” Shiro held up his hands in peace. “It’s really nice to be informal for a change, don’t worry about it!”

He asked a little about the town, about places to visit or cafes to eat at. Shay provided him with a handful of postcards and pamphlets, recommending her favourite vegetarian restaurant in the middle of town and the best place for coffee, and gave him a pocket map with the hotel, post office, local clinic and police station already marked.

“Just in case you get lost.”

He could have done with it last night. Last night…

“What did I see last night, making a bright flashing light at the top of the hill?”

Shay stopped to think about it, before trying,

“The observatory?” She drew a little star on the map. “It’s out of service at the moment, though. If someone is breaking in then I’ll have to let Hu-- Mr Garret know.”

“It couldn’t have been a lighthouse or something.”

“No, there are lighthouses on the points either side of the bay, but they’re not visible from the town.” She smiled, civic pride bringing colour to her cheeks. “This  _ is _ a smugglers’ cove, after all! Historically, darkness has been this town’s dear friend.”

_ An hour ‘til sundown. Scared of the dark. A light on the hill, darkness a dear friend. _

This place was a lot stranger than he had thought. Pretty and welcoming, but very strange.

 

Shiro thanked Shay for the information and left his phone number, in case Hunk came to meet him while he was out. A guide was useful, but sometimes, to get the feel for a town, you just had to go out and get lost all on your own.

Preferably not in pitch darkness, of course.

Queenie followed him, trotting alongside like a well-trained dog, pausing where he paused with her tail wrapped around the back of his knee, getting into shots where he stopped to take photographs, and dipping her tail into his coffee as he made an attempt at breakfast.

 

A second grilled cheese sandwich clattered onto the table next to his own, and he was about to look up and tell the waiter he hadn’t ordered two, when the waiter pulled the chair out and dropped into it, elbows on the table, right next to him.

“Morning!” Lance beamed, “I see you’ve made a friend.”

Shiro tried to hide his surprise by drinking his coffee, but found it full of tail.

“Here, let me get you a fresh one…” Lance took the cup from unresisting hands and slipped behind the counter, bumping hips with an older woman as he took over the coffee machine and made Shiro a new cup of hot americano. The woman shoved back, flapping a tea towel at Lance’s head, but they were both laughing. It made Shiro feel like he had wandered into their home.

 

“So where did you find Queenie?” Lance asked, making a point of shoving the cat off the table before setting the fresh brew down before Shiro. The cat jumped up onto a spare seat, eyes just above the level of the table, watching.

“Woke up with her on my chest.”

“Not the first time she’s done that.  _ Have you been out causing your papa heartache again, Queenie girl? Yes you have! _ ” Lance pulled his sandwich in half and wheedled out a string of cheese, laying it before the cat, a humble offering. She ate it, and set about washing her paws. Lance sucked his fingers clean, and waved at an elderly couple as they shuffled in to take up a table.

“Lance, do you know absolutely  _ everyone _ in town?”

“Most of them!”

“And you work in all the cafés?”

“Nah, just this one and  _ Violetta _ , really. This is my big sister’s place,” he pointed a thumb at the tall woman behind the counter, who gave Shiro a wink so suggestive, he immediately felt like he’d committed an arrestable offence just by looking. “I mean, she runs it. I own the business but really I only check in to say hi and do the paperwork. Sometimes I help out if there’s a rush.”

“She brews good coffee,” Shiro said, finally taking a good long sip.

“She sure does!” Lance glowed with pride.

 

Caught on his own, Lance was surprisingly good company. Without Hunk there to be the designated adult, and no Keith to spar with, his conversation was measured and engaging. He knew a lot about the town as it was now, had grown up running loose around its streets, but insisted Hunk was better at the history. His hands did a lot of the talking, but he spoke like an old friend, open and sincere.

He didn’t know anything about the light on the hill either.

“I mean, we could go up and take a look if you want. Observatory’s out of bounds at the mo, but Hunk would wrangle me a permission slip.”

Shiro wanted to say yes, but had no idea how much longer he would be in town. He probably shouldn’t get mixed up in local mysteries if he was going to be leaving in a week. He waved it off as a passing curiosity, and settled for a more practical question.

“So, if I was looking for somewhere to film…” He paused as Lance immediately shuffled his chair right up against his, the light of excitement radiating from his face. Shiro showed him the project brief on his phone. “The heroes here are on the run, and they’re dodging through narrow alleyways, looking for a place to lay low and lick their wounds before making an escape by sea… Now, with editing we can obviously film in several locations and cut it together, but the environment has to be of a fairly consistent style or it’ll look bad on screen. Is there anywhere round here with…”

Lance peered over at the acres of text on Shiro’s screen.

“‘A cellar, a basement, a church with catacombs, a metro network or natural caves,’” Lance read. “Not asking much, are you?” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “I thought you were trying to be on holiday?”

“Yeah, kinda. But...”

“Call of the job, kind of thing? I get it, it’s hard to let go sometimes.” Lance reached for the map Shay had provided, patted himself down until he found a pen, then started to sketch, talking all the while.

“This is the oldest church in Estrella, it’s very small but it does have catacombs. This area around it  _ here _ is one of the oldest quarters, the lanes are very narrow and a lot of the buildings overhang, sometimes they completely enclose it. It’s well-heeled though, couldn’t tell you why but the nobs like it. Just here… This is my bar, see? It’s a super old pub built on the ruins of a  _ super  _ super old pub, and we have a huge cellar and there’s this bricked-up wall at one end that absolutely connects to the old smuggling runs, I would bet my last dollar on it.” He looked up, his smile all full of bright white teeth. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to go have a look…”

“What’s the building style around here?”

“Fairly simple, yellow sandstone, some red brick in the outskirts. A few are the old black-and-white stuff.”

“Wattle and daub. In a seaside town?”

“They’re mostly uphill, all the seafront buildings are sandstone. Some are painted or stuccoed. Oh, and there’s no thatch around here, it’s all tiles.”

“Why do you play at being the idiot in your crew?”

Lance froze, letting the pen fall from his hand. Shiro pressed on,

“You run businesses. You’re wildly popular.”

“You’re a therapist too, huh.”

“I’m just an outsider, Lance. You can talk to me, I’m a total stranger here. What’s going on?”

Lance slouched, shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and sank into the chair.

“Who says I can’t be a clever fool? The fool has the ear of the king…”

“Hunk is the king in this scenario?”

“Mayor is close enough, I guess.” He pursed his lips, contemplating, but apparently decided there was no harm in Shiro knowing.

“Truth is, I tried  _ so _ hard, I really,  _ really _ wanted to graduate and get my shuttle licence and be the big breadwinner for my family. I wanted to go to  _ space, _ man! But the  _ stress _ , you know? I didn’t want to leave my family behind in the first place, and then being a good student and scraping to pay my college fees, it all mounted up, and then one day Hunk asked me what I’d done with the old Lance, and I kind of… had a crisis.”

Shiro felt awful. His question had brought on a change in Lance, and the result was deeply saddening. It was as though he was decaying before Shiro’s eyes.

“I couldn’t hack it. I quit. I talked it over with Hunk and my family... And I decided it was better to be a happy failure than a miserable success. So I came back here, and turned out to be a big ol’ disappointment for a while, until Hunk and Keith bullied me into a job. And that…  _ eventually, _ that started to make me better.”

“But not what you were aiming for. Not the perfect solution.”

“No,  _ god  _ no. But in the end I realised what Hunk was getting at. What’s so great about perfect, anyway? I get to be Lance, that’s a whole lot better than perfect.”

His smile was rising again, beating back the tears that had threatened to break from his eyes.

“I  _ know _ I’m smart, dude. If I have to prove that every time I open my mouth, I’m in bad company.”

“I guess I must seem like bad company,” Shiro said, chastened. “I’m sorry.”

“Nah, you’re good. Something tells me you’re fighting your own little war already. If you need reinforcements, just ask.”

Suddenly, Lance clapped his hands, making the cat re-emerge and peer at him round the salt shaker. “Anyway, time to roll out. We’re taking up a valuable table and the sights aren’t going to see themselves.”

Lance insisted that he would pick up Shiro’s tab, but couldn’t sway him from leaving a tip. Then Shiro gathered his papers, his phone, and what was apparently now his cat, and let Lance lead the way out onto the street, Queenie trotting happily at his heels once again.

“I think you should know,” he said, impressed that Lance’s long stride was making him work to keep up, “I fell out with the Garrison, too.”

“Really?”

“Graduated the cadets, class of ‘13. I was valedictorian. But after the cadet years it gets aggressively military. I took my BSc and ran.”

“Class of ‘13?”

“Right.”

“Class of ‘13…”

Shiro carried on for a few paces before he realised Lance had fallen behind. He was frowning at the pavement, fingers twitching before him as numbers ran across his brain. Then he looked up, the picture of panic, and yelled. Just yelled, a noise with no words involved, a pure, primal response. People stopped and stared, the street cafe scene grinding to a halt all around them. Shiro ran back to him, wondering what on earth could have caused this, looking for some open wound or possible trigger, but found nothing.

“You’re twenty-four!” Lance screamed.

“Yes?”

_ “You’re twenty-four!?”  _ Lance squeaked.

_ “Yes!” _

Lance shook his head in disbelief.

“Oh man, you are just  _ unfair.” _

  
  


Hunk managed to convince himself that he wasn’t running late. Mayoral duties had to take precedence over personal plans, and he valiantly smothered the feeling that he was letting Shiro down. The meeting ran on around him, as it always did. He listened and spoke with care and reason, leaving his own private issues to simmer at the back of his mind, until he had time. He organised and compartmentalised more efficiently than a sorting office, in his life and in his work. He wasn’t just Estrella’s youngest Mayor, he was also its best in decades.

 

However, something he had learned the night before had upset him. He pushed it down, but it kept sneaking back to the surface like an alligator, just waiting for him to try his luck and dip a toe in the water.

Lance had still been singing Shiro’s praises long after Keith had delivered their guest back to the hotel, and had pulled up his IMDB page, because _ inaccurate facts are just lies in disguise, Hunk. _

Shiro had been a top-tier stuntman, had been the body on screen in some of the industry’s most dangerous, elaborate scenes over the past five years. He had specialised in high-speed motorbike stunts, and had been filming one when part of a lighting rig had shaken loose and beaned him right on the forehead, cutting to the bone and knocking him out. Lance had grown excited in the retelling, explaining that Shiro’s protective gear had saved his life, but that his hair had started to grow in white after the scalp injury healed, which only  _ put him up from a solid seven to a nine at least _ , according to Lance. He returned to work a mere six weeks later, and completed the stunt that earned the film three awards.

 

His final film hadn’t gone so well. The archived news reports hadn’t gone into graphic detail, but what they did tell was awful enough. Put simply, he had crashed at high speed into a fast-moving train, his right forearm had been sheared off, and a following camera car had run him down.

The director had used some of the raw footage in the trailer.

They watched the trailer.

They were both very quiet after that.

Initial news reports claimed he was dead. It took three days for that statement to be corrected and withdrawn, but at that point even the internet gave up. Shiro was last seen being airlifted to a private hospital just over three years ago, and that was it.  _ He  _ might not have died, but his career was dead and buried.

The memory of the trailer had kept Hunk up all night.

 

Still feeling a little nauseous, he tuned back in as the chief secretary summarised the meeting, relevant votes were cast, and topics for the next week were drawn up and agreed upon. The council rose, the meeting ended, but even then Hunk didn’t hurry. Youth could excuse a lot of things, but it was never a good idea for a political figure to be seen running from their place of work. People might get the wrong idea. He sauntered as quickly as he could to the cloakrooms, changed out of his suit and back into civvies, retrieved his bag and his longboard, and strolled easily out of the building on foot, to the first junction a few dozen yards down the road. Only then did he let himself move as fast as his wheels would carry him.

The apology formed in his mind as he rushed past shops and houses. He was sorry for being late, he was sorry for arriving at such high speed, on a skateboard of all things. Totally undignified.

He was sorry he hadn’t known about the motorbike thing. He’d sent Shiro a lift in the form of a motorcycle.  _ Twice _ .

 

However, when he spotted Shiro and Lance in the street ahead, he wasn’t expecting Lance to be  _ yelling _ so much. Shiro was glued to the spot, a cat all puffed up and hiding behind his legs. He stepped back, hands up in an ‘I didn’t do it’ gesture as Hunk came to a stop beside them. Lance whipped around to face Hunk immediately, hands flapping at the whole of Shiro.

“He’s  _ twenty-four  _ Hunk I  _ cannot believe it. _ ”

“Yes?”

“Twenty-four!” Lance repeated, voice breaking into a high pitched shriek.

“So?”

“And he was only like two years above us!”

Hunk sighed in relief; no harm was done, it was just Lance having a Lance moment. He took his friend’s face in both hands and began squishing his cheeks as though kneading a dough ball.

“You’re doing that loud thing again, buddy.”

“Shorry,” Lance lisped as his face underwent an impromptu massage. “It’sh jusht… Okay. Okay you can shtop now. Hunk pleashe.”

 

Hunk didn’t stop immediately, so Shiro took another step backwards, giving them some room while they carried on, and the rest of the town turned back to its own business, normality, or at least something like it, apparently restored. 

Lance touched his own cheeks as Hunk released him, grounded by this strange little ritual. There was a quiet half-minute while Hunk patted him fondly on the shoulder.

“Feeling better?”

“Well, can’t say I’m sure about that…  _ twenty-four.  _ Come _ on.” _

Shuffling from one foot to the other, Shiro asked,

“Help me out here, should I be feeling honoured, or offended?”

“Stick with confused,” Hunk suggested with the steady voice of experience. “Confused is pretty normal at first. After a while you’ll just learn to speak Lance.” He gave Lance another little pat, as though he had been a good puppy.

“So is there a phrasebook I can buy, or...? Guys--”

To Shiro’s surprise, he’d made them both laugh. They started chuckling, Hunk first, then Lance, and they’d fed off one another’s laughter until they were only standing because they were propping one another up, Hunk leaning on his longboard for support. This was good, right? This was okay. This was what normal people did, they ran into other humans and they made connections, and they made friends, and with luck they made people laugh.

He was so used to having just a camera and a landscape and nobody to talk to besides his doctor.

And Pidge, who was usually the one doing the talking.

But these two...

“Guys…”

...They just didn’t stop.

“Guys please…”

  
  


The Church of St Dominic in Estrella was tiny, but beautifully maintained, with a large cemetery ringed by a high yew hedge, creating a little garden of total peace in the middle of a bustling town. Its ceiling had been painted blue and dotted with gold stars, and the chandeliers hung so low that Shiro could reach up and touch them without any effort, fingers trailing a twinkly little tune through strings of antique cut glass. Hunk pointed out all the original features, parts of the frescoes that had originally been painted over four hundred years ago, where gold leaf had been lovingly restored and colours refreshed as generations of the congregation had put their hearts into the care of their church. Shiro didn’t miss that Lance genuflected as he entered, a habit so old it had worn a groove, both in the floor and in the boy’s soul. Lance caught him looking, and shrugged.

“My man Dominic,” he said, voice ringing a little sadly in the holy space, “patron saint of astronomers. Old habits, you know.”

Shiro knew.

But the church was almost  _ too  _ well maintained, there was no grime or dirt to be found. Even the low-ceilinged catacombs below were swept clean, the sandstone floor polished by centuries of footsteps, until it was as smooth and as mirror-bright as marble. Shiro took photographs all the same, putting Lance in a couple of shots to give a sense of scale.

“You don’t have to pose, Lance.”

“Oh yes I do!” Lance crooned, draping his arms around the shoulders of a statue.

“Oh yes he does,” Hunk echoed, as patient as a saint.

 

As they crossed the square in front of the church to check out the town’s narrowest lanes, a sleek black saloon passed them by and turned into a private court a few houses down.

“That was never Moses Cole-Percival’s car,” Lance murmured under his breath.

“It was,” Hunk confirmed. “Good as new.”

“I heard it got written off, totally totalled.”

“And I heard Keith had a new MPW delivered last week and he’s been creaming himself just thinking about trying it out.”

“Oh yeah, says who?”

“Says Keith.”

“That’s gross,” Lance said, but with no hint of malice, “that dude needs an outlet, god damn.”

Shiro interjected, all too happy to stop this conversation in its tracks. Someone had just come gliding out of the driveway and was heading in their direction.

“What’s an MPW?”

Lance was busy winding up to do something, so Hunk replied,

“It’s a magnetic pulse welder. We had one in the manufactory at the Garrison, did you ever use it?”

Shiro shook his head. He’d taken astrophysics, not engineering. Hunk opened his mouth to explain further, but was promptly drowned out. Lance cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered at the approaching figure,

“Kogane Keith has a  _ boner for blacksmithing! _ ”

_ “No I do not!” _

  
  


The first thing Keith did as he rolled up before them was give Lance a sharp punch in the shoulder, muttering mild curses under his breath. Then he smiled wearily at Hunk and was about to turn the same gaze on Shiro when he was distracted by the gigantic ball of fluff at Shiro's feet.

“Queenie!”

Keith called to her and his whole demeanour transformed, a serious, tired labourer one moment and a shining cherub the next, albeit a pale one. The cat sprang up into Keith's arms on cue, rubbing her face against his and kneading her paws into his chest.

“Where have you been, my little girl?”

_ Little? _

“Sleeping around again,” Lance offered before anyone could stop him.

“She got into my room,” Shiro clarified. “No harm done, promise.”

Keith turned the cat over in his arms and cradled her like a baby, dodging with practiced ease as her enormous paws batted at his fingers.

“You’ve always had good taste, haven’t you, sweetie?” He smiled up at the rest of them. “Thanks for keeping an eye on her, guys, she’s been driving me crazy.”

 

Keith and Hunk began a hushed patter of conversation, apparently talking business. Hunk handed over his longboard when Keith gestured to it, and Keith produced a small notebook which they both pored over for a few minutes while Lance and Shiro made small talk and played with the cat.

Something Hunk said made Keith look up sharply, a smile flickering across his mouth as he met Shiro’s eye. Shiro could have sworn that brief little grin was meant for him. Positive. Or he could have been imagining it, and wouldn’t that be worse? Oh boy. He fumbled for something to occupy his hands as a distraction and managed to drop his phone and his water bottle in quick succession. He pinched his nose with a sigh. Smooth. And then Lance stooped to help retrieve his things at the exact same time as he knelt to pick them up, and they collided and fell back like beach balls, each clutching at the blossoming pain in his own skull as they sat on the pavement like a pair of chastised toddlers.

 

“Good show, you gonna join the circus?”

“Thanks Keith, you unsympathetic ass.” Lance actually had tears in his eyes as Keith rolled forward and helped him to his feet, but no harm was done. Hunk was hiding his laughter behind a bout of coughing. Keith offered his hand to Shiro, bracing his skates against the kerb as he hauled Shiro upright. He didn’t let go of Shiro’s arm.

“Well this is cool,” he murmured, taking it in both hands and spreading Shiro’s fingers like a folding fan. The motion was curious, childlike in its simplicity, but if Keith was even half as intelligent as Hunk and Lance - and he was absolutely on their level - then he was probably learning more about Shiro’s prosthesis in these fleeting seconds than Shiro knew himself. Shiro tried not to look like he was staring back, trying to work out if Keith’s eyes were really purple, or if he was imagining it, but got caught as those eyes looked up at his own. Keith’s gaze pinned him in time and space. Shiro could see distant nebulae. Keith eventually let go of his hand as though returning an antique vase.

“Nice work. Anyway, I’ve got places to be. Catch you later, guys.”

Keith scooped his cat up off the ground and draped her over his shoulders like a scarf, nodded at Hunk and Lance and turned to leave.

Shiro surprised himself by calling out,

“Wait!”

Then he stalled, caught out by his own mouth, and fumbled for sensible words.

“You eat dinner, right?” Oh, nice one Shiro. Good job, gold star. Lance snorted as he failed to swallow a laugh, and now Keith was smirking, amused.

“Only in the evenings. Want to try that one again?”

“I mean… uh. Will you… Yes. Will you join m--  _ us.  _ Join us for dinner. Er, tonight?”

Keith smiled, and this time it was definitely aimed specifically at Shiro.

“Sure. Let me know where you are, I’ll join you.”

 

Hunk had to excuse himself to make a phone call, so Lance continued leading their little tour, dipping in and out of tiny alleys, where the buildings had grown so close together that in several places Shiro had to duck, and more than once had to turn his shoulders sideways to pass through comfortably. Lance pointed out tiny windows and half-sized doors that looked totally out of place, but had once served a purpose.

Moss grew up the walls where light and moisture met, the stonework was dusty with age where it was dry. Fine yellow sand coated his clothes where he brushed against it, tendrils of wall plants tickled his face, spiders got caught in his hair.

It was cool, like an old forest. Ethereal, with the sounds of life on the other side of the walls muffled as though coming from far away.

“We used to play in there a lot as kids,” Lance offered as they came upon an iron gate, totally overgrown with ivy and bindweed. “You ever heard of The Secret Garden? It’s kinda like that for us. No grown-ups allowed. Bet the latch is stuck, anyway…” He reached through the gate and gave the handle a little rattle. “Yeah, no good.”

Shiro stood back, looking up the wall. It ended abruptly and the fingers of some creeping plant peeped over the top. It must be a jungle inside. Further up, the upper storeys of the surrounding buildings completely enclosed this windowless little square, the sky a brilliant square-cut sapphire hanging overhead. Somewhere, he could hear water trickling.

“Wanna see it?”

“Nah, I think it’s probably better in my memory.”

“But what if  _ I _ want to see it? Come on, I’ll give you a boost.”

Shiro leaned his back against the wall and laced his fingers, and was pleased that Lance wasted no time in changing his mind. He hopped up and sat on the top of the wall, one leg dangling on either side, and reached down for Shiro to take his arm.

It wasn’t as overgrown as they had expected. Ivy and virginia creeper had swallowed the gate, but the other walls supported trellises of jasmine and passion flower, a leggy wisteria and an even more leggy forsythia reaching into the open space. In the middle there was evidence of forgotten toys, a child-size set of garden furniture, a hobby horse looking very forlorn as grass grew up through its mane. A blocked grate at the foot of one wall gurgled out a little stream of water, which wormed its way across the little garden and dripped down a large, round grille in the floor. Every drop echoed.

“Promise me you won’t use this, though,” Lance said as Shiro moved to take photos. “I think it’d lose its magic if too many people saw it.”

It was spoken with feeling. Lance wasn’t stupid, he was logical and, despite his demeanour, perfectly sensible. But there was such a thing as sentimental value, and trust was hard won if it was broken.

“Promise, I won’t touch it. If we ever need a place like this, props and sets can build one for us. Thanks for showing it to me.”

“No problem, man.”

 

And so they continued. They’d emerge from one alley and go a few doors up the street, then squeeze down another narrow lane and back into the maze that Estrella had kept hidden from view for nearly five hundred years. They saw neat little back gardens where the residents had, rather sensibly, chosen to specialise in moss and ferns. They found the legendary vertical herb garden on the back of Lance’s mother’s house, irrigated by a very home-made spout: an old teapot suspended from the gutter above. A precarious flight of stairs, no more than beams of wood sticking out of a wall, let them climb up onto the tiles and look out across the roofscape, and Lance pointed out where they’d been, giving the whole town an even stranger perspective. It didn’t feel like they’d walked any distance at all, but they’d crossed more than half the city. The spire of the church was just visible almost three quarters of a mile away.

“And down there, that’s where we’ll be eating tonight,” Lance said, pointing to a little shed on the beach.

“You’re kidding.”

“Not all the best food comes out of restaurants. Rolo’s flatbreads are deee-lish. Even Hunk loves them, and so does my mom, so that’s practically a professional opinion. And he’ll even leave the anchovies off for Keith. Oh! I nearly forgot--”

Lance skittered down the steps again, agile as an acrobat, and Shiro nearly lost him as he backtracked to his mother’s garden.

She was there now, carefully plucking stems of parsley and oregano, and stopped to grab her son by both ears, forcing him to bend down for a kiss on the forehead, smudging dirt onto his temples.

“Is this our friend Shiro?”

“Oh, yeah. Shiro, this is my mom. Mom, this is Shiro, he’s a location scout who sucks at being on holiday.”

Shiro offered his hand without thinking.

“What in heaven’s name…”

Oh.

“That’s fantastic. Did you have that made special?” She took it and gave it a firm handshake, delight breaking out across her face.

What was it about this town? Shiro made a mental note to move here when he retired.

“Mom, Rolo’s gonna be back in a couple of hours, you fancy trading herbs for flatbreads?”

“Sure, you want to take it now or shall I bring it along later?”

“Later is better, freshness and whatnot. See you at five?”

“I’ll be there at four and so will you. Lance, you’ve got dirt on your face.”

“I know,  _ thanks _ mom.”

 

Lance sent Shiro back to the hotel for a shower,  _ because you smell like you’ve been crawling through alleyways, man, _ and promised to meet him there at half three. That still left a good two hours of nothing much to do, so having showered and changed into what remained of his new clothes, Shiro took his wallet for a walk into town.

The tourist shops were nothing special, nothing they sold was totally unique. A small liquor store professed to stock rare and unique vintages, hinting that they might have been salvaged from a wrecked ship. Shiro didn’t really care for liquor by the bottle though, and passed it by.

He asked about the lemon truffles in a sweet shop that seemed to be both manned and patronised entirely by kids, and having confirmed they were the sweets he was looking for, spent ten dollars on them and a further forty dollars on other exciting flavours, had the whole lot inexpertly but very enthusiastically gift-wrapped, and left with the feeling of having done his good deed for the day.

 

He saw Keith rush past at the far end of the street, black hair fluttering as he skated on to his next assignment. He didn’t try to call out this time, the residual embarrassment from the last attempt still clinging like a limpet to the inside of his brain. They’d meet again at dinner. He wondered what he should wear.

 

Lance met him at half past three, but only just. He came running into the lobby just as the wall clock sounded the half-hour, trying not to pant but very obviously windswept. There was sand in his hair and stuck to his skin.

“Sorry! Sorry, I got caught up in something. Come on, you’re gonna love this!” He made it to the desk and leaned over the counter. “You too, Shay, come on! Rolo’s cooking!”

“Mr Rolo?” There was a definite note of excitement being expertly managed. “I’d love to come, but my shift doesn’t finish for another half an hour. I’ll join you?”

“Super! Excellent, I’ll let Hunk and everyone know you’re coming.”

“Vegetarian, Lance!”

“As if I would forget! Anything for the wonderful Shay.” He reached for her hand and kissed her knuckles. Shay blushed. Then Lance spun around and headed for Shiro.

“Come on, dude, come  _ on! _ Let’s go!”

 

The little shack on the beach had been empty when they’d seen it earlier. Now it was all but invisible, surrounded by a small village of shelters and gazebos as people had arrived to help out, and then more people had arrived to join in. A little fishing tug was bobbing at anchor out in the bay, and a skiff had been rowed ashore and dragged all the way up the sand to lay before the shed. Lance vanished as soon as they arrived, dragged off by a horde of youngsters who all looked a little like him. A woman was selling fish fresh off the boat, wielding a sharp knife and a sharper voice, cutting and gutting and throwing fish into boxes of ice, ready to be taken away. She held up a hideous specimen that looked like a slimy black sock full of teeth, and declared,

“Wolf fish!”

There was nearly a riot. Everyone wanted the wolf fish. It was democratically divided between the first three people who responded, packed in ice, and labelled for them to collect later.

“Don’t worry, Hunk, I’ve saved one for you,” the woman called, and a voice from the gloom at the back of the shed called back,

“Thanks Nyma, I love you!”

What was so great about the wolf fish? Something that ugly couldn’t possibly taste good, right? It looked rotten already.

“It’s actually delicious,” said a voice at Shiro’s elbow. “Promise. One of the best fish on this planet. You like fruit ice?”

He was handed a single-packaged ice pop and almost dropped it immediately. Keith caught it and passed it back.

“You really need to work on that manual dexterity, Shiro.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my manual dexterity,” Shiro said, and only heard the pout in his voice after he had said it.

“Oh, really? You’ll just have to convince me some other way then, ‘cos juggling clearly isn’t in your repertoire.”

 

They found a space on the beach where they wouldn’t be underfoot and sat down together, letting the hubbub carry on around them. It was raspberry and mint ice, nothing fancy, just cool and refreshing. Shiro thought he was starting to get a feel for this town.

“You guys do simple things really, really well. There’s a lot of pride in that, isn’t there?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, your food is straightforward, but it’s always just right. You eat fish straight off the boat and vegetables out of the ground. You just pulled a party out of nowhere to welcome home your neighbour. There are no chain stores in the high street. There’s no litter bins, but there’s no litter either. What’s the population of this town?”

“About seven thousand, depending on the season.”

“People come for the summer?”

“More like people leave in the winter. It’s a grim coast when the wind is up.”

“I like it here. I think I could stand it.”

Keith nodded, draining the flavour from his ice with a childish slurp as Shiro continued,

“And nobody round here has treated me like a failure or an invalid. That’s a first.”

“Same here.”

“Why ‘same here’?”

“Oh… no reason. It’s not important anyway.” When Shiro turned to look, Keith was wearing a cryptic expression, half a smile, hiding something. That eyes-half-closed expression from before. The fruit ice had stained his lips pink. With his pale skin and dark hair, he looked like a Snow White cosplay in the making. Shiro knew he was staring this time, was conscious of it, but he had to sate his curiosity. He tilted his head, leaned forwards, just a little. Keith’s irises were--

“Your phone is ringing.”

Shiro reached for it, checked the screen, then stood and hurled the device away across the beach. He had aimed for a crop of rocks, but missed.

“Woah, good arm!”

No way. Not now, not today. He was not going to answer the phone to Sendak, not while he was here on this beach with the soft yellow sand between his toes, with this town full of great food and great company. Not while he was in the middle of talking about how welcome he felt. He wasn’t going to be ordered back to work today. 

Mood spoiled anyway, he sat back down, heavily, then leaned back and flopped on the sun-warmed sand. It was going to get all stuck in his arm, he knew, and it wouldn’t hurt, but it would slow his motion and take him hours to clean out properly. He reached up and pulled his white forelock down over his eyes, an inefficient visor against the light.

“Just bury me here, save me the hassle of dying first.”

“If you insist,” Keith said, deadpan, “I’ll go and get a bucket and spade.”

Keith left his side and for the first time in many years, Shiro felt like he’d been abandoned. This was stupid. He was crushing like a teenager on someone he’d only really met the night before. This wasn’t like him. He was stable and he worked hard. He had more focus than a telescope, and the same tunnel vision, or so he’d been told. He didn’t let things like this distract him.

He hadn’t had a holiday before, in his life, ever.

He heard the familiar bop of Pidge’s ringtone singing to itself, and went to retrieve the damned phone just in time to miss the call. He returned it, but it went straight to her cheery answering machine message instead. He hung up. Keith had returned, something that looked like a pizza balanced in one hand and two plastic beakers expertly held in the other.

“Whoever decided to produce grape flavoured soda water needs a medal. Here’s a flatbread, Lance’s favourite. Fresh tomato and garden herbs, guaranteed no ugly fish. And here’s some cheapo white wine, because we’re classy ‘round here.” He handed one beaker to Shiro and tapped his own against it.

“Cheers, I guess.”

“Cheers, Keith.”

Keith might have had grape soda, but Shiro knew wine when it hit his tongue, and was grateful for it. He drained the glass.

“That kind of a day, huh?”

“Tomorrow’s gonna be worse. Sorry. And now  _ your _ phone is ringing.”

Keith passed the flatbread to Shiro while he answered the call.

“Hello Katie, long time no see. ...I know. ....Yes, he’s here. ...Alright, I’ll take care of it.” He held the phone up for Shiro.

“For you.”

 

“In my defence, I did make him pay me five hundred dollars to make this call.”

“I’ve missed you too, Pidge.”

“I’m gonna put the big man on. But the short version is, you need to be on the next plane to Boston. Sorry, Shiro.”

Shiro didn’t listen to Sendak. He really wasn’t in the mood. The director went on and on about whatever ‘minor changes’ he had in mind for his masterpiece, and Shiro just brought up a recording app and let the man ramble away, letting the device take a memo for later. He chewed his flatbread and stared blankly out to sea. It had been so good. Now he felt like he was just passing through again, not staying for long, living his life behind a steering wheel, only seeing the world through a camera lens. Even this food had lost its flavour, knowing he didn’t have time to savour it.

He needed more wine.

He needed a nap.

“I need a proper holiday,” he moaned, as Lance and Hunk came to join him, sprawling in the sand. “One where I actually sleep in the same bed twice in a row,” he added, “and not a hospital bed.”

“Big ask,” Lance commented. “You really gotta leave? I was gonna take you out on the boat tomorrow.”

“Sounds like it,” Shiro said, checking in on the phone call. Sendak was still going strong. “I would have liked that, Lance. Maybe some other time.”

“Well now you’ve  _ got _ to come back. You haven’t even met all my sisters yet! Ooh, you could move in with Jeannie, she’s a--”

Hunk clamped one hand over his friend’s mouth.

“Or we could just say ‘Shiro, you’re welcome to visit at any time, don’t even worry about calling ahead, Estrella will always welcome you,’ and not try to marry off our sisters, okay?”

“Okay, I guess we could say that.”

The constant stream of hassle from the phone stopped and the call ended. Shiro sighed.

“I don’t want to leave…”

 

His bags were packed half an hour later, a powder-blue corvette was sitting in the hotel courtyard, its engine patiently turning over while Shiro thanked his hosts and said his goodbyes. It had been good of Shay to let Keith use her car, he had come down to the beach on foot and didn’t want to borrow Lance’s car, declaring it a health hazard based on empty sweet wrappers alone. He took Shiro’s meagre luggage with care and loaded it into the trunk, then leaned against the driver’s door, arms folded, in no hurry to leave until Shiro was ready to go.

Hunk had made all the arrangements in double-quick time. Before they’d even made it back to the hotel, Shiro’s outbound flight to Miami was booked, then the next plane to Boston, even a hotel at the other end. And all first class, Hunk’s treat.

“Not like I need the money. You, though, you definitely need to be pampered more often.”

“I never even got to use the jacuzzi… And you’re sure I can keep these clothes?”

“Damn sure, you wear them well,” Lance grinned. “Hunk sent me out to get them special. A gift from Estrella.”

“Thanks.”

He felt like he was going to cry. It felt like leaving home for the last time, all over again. He picked up his small day bag, shook them both by the hand, and turned away.

 

Keith drove in near total silence, having nothing much to say. It felt a little awkward, to say the least, and Shiro distracted himself from the silence by watching the sun and shadows move across the bonnet as the afternoon turned into the evening. When they got to the tiny local airfield he found it was no more than a hangar and a wide strip of tarmac, not even fenced off from the outside world. Keith unloaded his bags without saying a word, even when Shiro thanked him. This must just be his working persona, Shiro thought. He had barely said a word the first time Keith had picked him up in the rain. It felt like weeks ago.

It had been yesterday morning.

He never would know what had become of his old car.

 

He took one step away and nearly dropped his bags as he felt a slight pressure halfway up his spine, three fingers resting there lightly.

“You will come back, right?”

Sadness was not a good look on Keith’s face. His expression fell, and dragged the whole world down with it.

“I’ll try to, sure.”

“Not good enough, Shiro. Will you promise?”

“Any particular reason why?”

“I liked hanging out with you. I don’t get to say that often.”

There was a loneliness there that struck a chord with Shiro’s own world-weariness. This short break, these last forty hours had been a joy. He hadn’t felt as young as his years in far too long. And he’d thought of these boys as boys because they were still youthful. They still knew how to relax and unwind. 

They were barely two years his junior.

“Promise,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

 

The plane taxied onto the runway bang on time, and Shiro took one last look out of the window towards Estrella, the town itself hidden from view by the landscape in between.

A powder-blue corvette stood on the next runway over. As the engines powered up, it started to spin its back wheels in sync. The plane slowly moved forward, and the car kept pace, racing it all the way, until the plane’s wheels left the ground and Shiro was sure the car would too. It powered on, straight as a bullet, the driver unfazed as he reached nearly two hundred miles per hour, then braked, drawing up a mere foot from the fence. Keith scrambled to stand on the bonnet, both hands in the air in one final salute as the plane banked away and the car vanished from view.

 

He had to come back. He had to.


	3. Chapter 3

“So, how was Boston?”

Shiro’s voice came back muffled, face down in soft lilac sheets that weren’t rightly his.

“Boston. Boston was _the wettest._ ” He tipped his head to the side so as to speak more clearly. “And of course, it wasn’t what Sendak was looking for, either.”

“But did you have fun?”

“No…”

“Okay, well… did you try the lobster? I hear it’s delicious.”

“I’m afraid that rumour remains unconfirmed.”

He lifted his head and shuffled towards her, then rolled over and let his head flop backwards over the end of the bed. The upside-down vision of Allura at her dressing table was always a good view. She was always a good view, any way up.

“So that was my month. Treat any Darwin contenders recently?”

“A couple. Don’t fret, Shiro, your title of biggest idiot I’ve ever had on the slab remains perfectly intact.” She was brushing out her hair. Catching his reflection in her mirror, she turned, and ran the bristles through his forelock, making it fluff up. “Good to see you again, anyway.”

“Mm, It’s good to be back.”

“Oh, really? Try that again, but with feeling.”

Shiro groaned and moved off the bed, sliding his legs into soft cotton sweatpants and pulling them up over his hips. He stretched, he yawned, he reached for his bag, and produced a little package that looked like a four year old had wrapped it. It was sparkly.

“It’s always, always good to see you,” he said, giving Allura the present and a brief little kiss. “It just sucks that I only ever see you when I have to deal with Sendak.”

 

They shared an apartment.

This wasn’t _strictly_ true.

Shiro had rented apartment J07d because it was small and cheap, and this never mattered because he was hardly ever there. Allura had bought apartment J07a, the big luxury suite on the floor, because it was close to the hospital and had an enormous master bedroom, something she’d coveted since childhood. For two years they managed to completely miss one another. Even when he came home, Shiro always ended up staying with old friends, or in a hotel. It was just easier. He didn't trust himself in a kitchen anyway.

They hadn’t met until he’d been rolled into her operating theatre, bloody and broken. He spent months in her care as he went through recovery, spent hours at her side as she trained him to use this new prototype prosthesis that she was developing with the Three Doctor Holts. He’d been a model patient, and Allura had been genuinely sorry to discharge him for good.

She wasn’t expecting to find that he lived on the very same floor as her. She’d found him struggling to unlock his front door with his off hand, and had been horrified to find that his bed was just a mattress, the bed frame unassembled, still in its box, along with all his other worldly possessions. This was no way to recuperate.

They had come to an arrangement.

On paper they were fine. Morally speaking, it was a _little_ questionable. They both lived in Allura’s apartment, while Shiro’s had been relegated to storage only. Shiro was only in town once or twice a month, if that, and Allura often worked through the night, kipping in the staff room at the hospital. This meant they very rarely had to flip a coin to decide who got the bed.

Even when that situation arose, they didn’t bother. They just shared it. No big deal.

Sometimes, they slept together.

No big deal.

Allura had once tried to excuse it as ‘ongoing recovery therapy’, but Shiro had seen through that in a trice. Like him, she was devoted to her work, and didn’t want a partner _per se,_ but they both craved human companionship, and sometimes… sometimes, she said, you just had to scratch an itch.

Shiro had advised her to see a doctor if she had an itch. She’d locked him out for a week.

And so began their relationship, where they so often passed like ships in the night, only sleeping together once in a blue moon, and never mentioning it to the outside world. They lived in the same block of flats, what a genuine coincidence! How strange! Yes they _did_ use the same shampoo, thanks for noticing!

And of course, it was an added bonus to have your doctor so close, _haha,_ at hand.

 

She placed the gift on her dressing table next to the broken-down pieces that made up Shiro’s metal arm, and reached for what remained of the flesh one. She was the one and only person who ever did.

“You’re still improving, see? No more sores where it meets, a little redness around the elbow here, but we’re remodelling that pad anyway. Some of the scars are starting to fade, too.”

“I think that’s more on your part. Every time I see you, you take it away and bring it back better. My very own Winry Rockbell.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She’s a… legendary armour smith?”

This passed muster, for now. Allura would probably cry with laughter when she found out who she was being compared to. She would certainly be delighted.

“I do have an upgrade for you. It won’t be ready for a few days, though. With any luck, it’ll provide better water resistance, and I know you love the petty humour of having a platinum top coat, _Mister Shirogane_ , but Matthew says he has a titanium alloy that would be lighter and much harder-wearing. And just as shiny.”

“Okay.”

“Say ‘thank-you Allura,’”

“Thank-you, princess.”

“Oh you have _got_ to stop calling me that!” She preened nonetheless, reaching to unwrap his present. “Please tell me I’m having chocolate for breakfast…”

 

Her initial disappointment in finding they weren’t chocolates was immediately quashed as the brilliant fruit flavours burst on her tongue. Shiro happily watched her reaction, her eyes growing wide and child-like as she tasted the first lemon truffle, then left her to enjoy them as he moved off to shower and make coffee and eat normal, human food.

Well, cereal at least.

 

 

 

Shiro stared into the middle distance as downtown Burbank scrolled past the passenger window. He had seen pictures of Hollywood in its so-called Golden Era, but the landscape had changed so much since then. There were more high-rise buildings now that earthquake resistant designs had been massively improved, there was better public transport since fossil fuelled cars had been outlawed in the city, and the change in trade winds had brought a fresh, green new growth to what had, for a very long time, been a dry and dusty place.

Shiro didn’t really like it. He’d lived in California from a fairly young age and thought of these streets as home, but at the same time, he missed Hakata, where his great-grandmother hadn’t spoken a word of Japanese, and he didn’t have enough Korean to converse, but they had always smiled together. He missed Kyoto, where the mountains reached up to scratch at the sky. He missed Yame, where the tea fields seemed to roll on forever, scenting the air with the bittersweet perfume of cut leaves.

California was still a dry place. The modern, glass-fronted streets of Burbank felt strangely dead. He loved this place, in a way, but he still missed Japan.

He missed Estrella.

Allura reached over from the driver’s seat and squeezed his wrist, and he came back to reality as though stepping backwards through a beaded curtain, leaving behind a glimpse of his memory as he braced himself to turn and face another day in Hollywood. He’d just do what he always tried to do, and stay indoors, and not think about how uneasy it made him, to live in a place so full of light that there were no more stars in the sky.

 

 

 

Matt was waiting at the hospital gates, trying his best to look like he wasn’t at the wrong end of a long night shift. He blearily lifted his hand to give Shiro a hi-five, but missed.

“Give that man a raise,” Shiro murmured.

“Good to see you too,” Matt yawned.

“Are you sure you actually can see me?”

“No, I’ve definitely left my glasses somewhere in the lab. Good morning, Doctor Altea,” he continued, and held the front door open for Allura to enter.

Sometimes Shiro forgot that the Altea Bionics Centre was Allura’s inheritance. It had been a great shame to lose her father, but his expertise was more than matched in his daughter’s vibrant mind. Shiro had been very lucky to have been brought here after he…

...Well.

He put a steadying hand on Matt’s shoulder as his old friend wobbled slightly, following Allura more out of instinct than with any purpose. Matt worked too hard. All the Holts worked too hard. They were scientists, nerds of the very finest calibre, and got sucked into their work like rubber ducks into a vortex, often refusing to be rescued until success or sleep overcame them. Sam and Colleen at least had the good sense that came with years of experience, and could be persuaded to go home when tiredness began to set in, but Matt and Pidge were tenacious. More than once, Shiro had physically removed a sleeping Holt child from their workstation and made sure they were put to bed properly.

He loved the Holts. He always had, and always would.

Sam and Colleen greeted him warmly as Allura led the way into the big testing lab, both of them embracing him as though he were their own son. Sam patted him on the back and called him a good dog, which wasn’t as unusual as it ought to have been. They had been pushing themselves again.

“Seems like we all suck at being on holiday,” Shiro remarked, as Matt slumped onto a high stool and pulled a monitor towards him.

“We’ve been busy,” he said. “All good stuff.”

“You’re squinting Matt. Glasses to your left. Up a bit…”

“Thanks. Oh that’s much better, now I’m both tired _and_ literate.”

“Go to bed, Matt.”

Bed was not on the immediate horizon, however. There was nearly a riot when Allura told the Holts how much sand she had found in the old model’s elbow joint. Then there was a battery of tests to run on both patient and prosthetic, and then they had to take it apart and wire Shiro up to the new model, which stayed ten feet away in a blast chamber, just in case it tried to kill them. Shiro liked it immediately. Despite looking like electronic spaghetti, nothing like a human limb, all the right servos moved when he willed them to, and the sensory feedback was beautifully smooth. It even had an improved texture sensitivity, not quite fine enough to tell the difference between two grades of paper, but he could identify cotton jersey from linen cloth, a vast improvement on what he already had. He couldn’t help but grin like he’d been given a second birthday and was disappointed when he had to wear the old one again.

Then they had to either wake Matt up, or carry him to the car, because sleeping lab techs were no use to anyone.

Shiro carried him. It was easier. Then he went back to fetch Sam as well.

Which just left Allura to pore over their newest batch of data. She sighed with resignation as the Holt car pulled out of the parking lot, but waved away Shiro’s offer to stay and keep her company.

“I do have more than one patient,” she reminded him, as he watched to make sure she drank at least one cup of tea. “And besides, Coran will be here in an hour anyway. You run along and find Pidge, she’s been missing you.”

  


 

The problem with going to see Pidge was that it also meant going to see Sendak.

Shiro had years of practice at this. He took a string of buses that would eventually drop him off at the back of the studio, where a polite security guard knew exactly who he was and who he was avoiding, and cheerfully let Shiro hop the gate and enter the animatronics hangar through the fire escape, without alerting reception.

Pidge’s hangar was _huge._ As a child, she had always loved old monster movies, and had wanted to know how the magic was made. Now, with the space and the resources to do so, she had filled a room big enough to swallow a jumbo jet with the life-size skeletons of robotic dinosaurs and fully mobile maquettes of the Terminator. She had followed in her mother’s footsteps, taking the Garrison course in robotics and computer engineering with a two year advance entry, and everyone had expected her to move into medical sciences like the rest of her family, or follow the program and become an astronaut, but she left with a first class degree, and never returned to school. The authorities wanted answers; _why had they advanced this kid only to let them drop out_? They would never know. Katie Holt had vanished from all the Garrison’s records as though she had never been enrolled in the first place.

Barely two months later, the mysterious Pidge Gunderson won her first Oscar for special effects.

 

She was still _kinda_ sorry about the time her mobile rig had knocked Shiro out, but in retrospect she wasn’t all _that_ sorry. It had been a learning curve, he’d practically walked it off, and the white hair suited him, or at least she said so.

Come to think of it, Shiro realised, a number of people had said so.

Hm.

She was _very_ upset about the incident that had left a burn scar across his nose, though. She'd been down with flu and someone else had built the helmet that Shiro wore for that shot. And he did it perfectly, just complaining that he was getting a bit too hot behind the visor. He got burned sometimes, it was part of the job, and he took it in stride, until he had peeled the helmet off and the sudden, cold air on his skin had _stung_ and the world tasted of copper, and his poor makeup artist was screaming for a medic.

Pidge had damn near killed her substitute when she found out. He liked to cut corners, huh? Too lazy to enclose a lighting wire, was he? She hoped he liked soup, because if she ever saw his face again she’d punch his fucking teeth out and turn them into knuckledusters.

Pidge was obscenely protective of her friends. She had the official police reprimands to prove it.

 

Shiro could hear metal sparking somewhere up ahead. He went through the ritual secret handshake with the robotic skeleton right by the back door, then wove his way through aisles of floor-to-ceiling shelves and ladders, full of boxes with curious labels, _grommets (lacquered), spigots, worm gears (4mm),_ until he found the big space at the centre of the hall, where Pidge was suspended from the roof in a harness, welding a joint on a six-storey high rig.

Shiro waited for her to turn off the gas torch before he whistled for her attention. She moved fast, rappelling to the ground and leaping onto Shiro’s arms, letting him swing her around as though she was still five years old, playing with her big brother.

“Oh you’re back! You made it!” She looped her arms tight around her neck and squished her cheek against his. “And you _still_ can’t grow a beard, you big baby!”

“I’ll grow one if you’ll grow one,” he teased, letting her find her feet as she talked, a thousand words at a time.

“So how was Estrella? Is Keith still kinda weird? Hunk says you made friends with his new kitty. I bet Lance tried to flirt with you. _Did_ Lance try to flirt with you? Oh wow, did you bring me a present?”

Shiro was already pulling the badly-wrapped parcel of sweets from his pocket. Her smile widened as she took the treasure.

“I’m sorry it’s not a gadget, but they had these amazing sweets at the hotel, and…”

She was already tucking in. Her face was the picture of bliss.

“Oh yeah,” she said, mouth full of sugar, “That’s the stuff. That’s the good stuff right there. You have _got_ to ask Hunk for his recipe, that dude is a genius.”

 

They perched on the edge of a huge table while Pidge explained, around mouthfuls of sweets, what it was she was building. Shiro didn’t try to stop her, didn’t want to. Pidge at full speed could be hard to follow, she got so caught up in her own stream of consciousness that a casual listener could easily lose the thread. Shiro knew the drill, however, and let her get the excitement out.

She was building a Gundam.

“Just the head unit,” she admitted, although she didn’t deny that she could and would build a working Gundam if required. “This one is for Wing Zero, I’ve already done Deathscythe, it’s over on stage nine for dressing. I’m kinda hyped about it to be honest, I mean who doesn’t want to hang out with a gigantic robot head?”

“I thought I was working on a thriller?”

_“You_ might be, I’m freelance,” she said with a smug grin. “This big fella is for Namco Bandai and they are paying me through the nose for it. It even snorts steam, look—”

She reached for a toy car remote and twisted a dial. Sure enough, stage fog came blasting out of the gundam’s face. Pidge grinned up at Shiro, proud of herself.

“But you’re building it on Sendak’s lot, using Sendak’s time and money.”

“Sendak can kiss my pretty little ass,” she declared, unwrapping another blueberry bonbon.

Sendak was incapable of kissing anyone’s ass but his own, a gymnastic feat of morality that only proved he had no morals at all. Pidge flew close to the sun as always, and as always, she came up smelling of roses.

Well, roses and grease. And money. And _success._

She offered to call their good friends from Props and Costumes over for a chat, but as much as Shiro always looked forward to seeing Ulaz and Antok, he really did have actual, genuine, for-money work to do. He didn’t want to do it, but there it was. He proceeded to make no such move to do it, preferring to take in the strangely satisfying smell of metal cooling and paint drying all around him.

“I had an interesting chat with someone in Estrella,” he said, getting the words in while Pidge’s mouth was too full to talk. “They made a good point about success versus happiness. I might think about packing this in and moving away.”

Pidge’s eyes grew wide in silent horror as she chewed.

“Don’t panic, I’m not going today and I wouldn’t dare leave you without warning. I’m just saying, I’m considering a change in career.”

Pidge swallowed.

“In Estrella?”

“Ah, busted.”

“Doing _what?”_

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Come to think of it, he really didn’t have many marketable skills. Between them, Hunk and Lance and Keith seemed to have the whole town working in perfect balance, spinning like a top. He wondered if there was any little niche left for him at all.

“I don’t suppose there’s such a job as eating for a living?”

There probably was, she conceded, but neither could remember what it was called.

“And there’s no money in pining after people you barely know, either,” Pidge said sharply, nailing Shiro’s heart to the wall with precision. “Hunk noticed. Hell, I’ll bet you nine months’ wages they all did. You’re one of the best actors I know but damn, you got caught staring at Keith, like, _five times in two days._ Try to reel it in a bit, yeah? Those boys are like brothers to me. I’m sure you have to ask my permission or something.”

Shiro immediately felt a conflicting cocktail of emotions. Guilt first, followed by embarrassment, defiance, fear, hope, and a smidgen of desire, if he was going to be honest. He was absolutely not going to be honest. Damn. _Damn,_ she was sharp.

The thought of asking little sister Katie for permission to date her friend was almost laughable, but the more Shiro thought about it, the more it smacked of a good excuse to go back to Estrella, sooner than anticipated.

“I guess that means you’d want to be my chaperone, too. Right? Can’t leave me unattended with them, we might get in trouble.”

“Ooh, very true. I’d have to insist on accompanying you to Estrella if you ever go again.”

They deliberately didn’t make eye contact. They were homing in on the same idea, Shiro could feel it. He and Matt had learned to work well together, but Pidge had come into this world already on his wavelength, and with a much stronger signal. It was still polite to ask, though.

“Got any big plans next month?”

“If you’ll help me finish these rigs we could leave in a week.”

“Deal.”

“Good. I’ve been looking forward to the chance to punch Lance in the face.”

  
  
  


“You are kidding me.”

Lance made an attempt at looking sorry. It didn’t fly.

“She called you to arrange a pickup for Shiro, and that was the first time you’d spoken in… _holy pancakes,_ it’s been over four years! _How!?_ ” Hunk shoved a tea towel into his friend’s hands and directed him towards the dishwasher with a none too gentle shove. “You two were tight as a drum back in college! You haven’t even sent her a text?”

“Couldn’t do it,” Lance shrugged, plucking dishes from the machine and wiping them down. “I just… couldn’t do it. Not after that last conversation. Anyway, I was a total mess for like, two years. I’m not even sure I’m the same person she knew back then.”

“You’re not,” Hunk said, “And that’s kind of the point. You really upset her when we left, you didn’t even say goodbye properly, and now you say you haven’t said a word to her since?” Hunk shook his head in disbelief. “Man, I really thought you two were going places, too.”

 

It had been a hectic day at Violetta. There had been the sixty-strong wedding party in the morning, then two stag nights for the evening shift to deal with. All hands had been called in, but one of the crowds from out of town had become rowdy, and Lance had stepped in, sending his younger staff home early for their own peace of mind, and taking care of the drunkards himself.

He was _meant_ to be having a quiet pint with Hunk and Rolo, but with the regular staff on surprise paid leave, Hunk had taken command of his kitchen and Rolo was being masterfully sarcastic over the bar. Bloody tourists. Lance sighed loudly and shoved plates back onto their rack with none of his usual care.

“I asked her out. So what?”

“On the last day before we split? Pretty big what.”

“I asked her out, and she got real angry about it.”

“Asking a girl out the day before you leave town doesn’t show you care, dude, it shows you think you can cut and run any moment. Generally, not a good move.”

“Yeah? Well… well. She chewed me out real good and… and I know I deserved it. And we haven’t spoken since.”

“Unbelievable. Un- _freaking_ -believable, dude. You—  _you!_ — fell out with Pidge.”

Lance leaned against the counter, letting his legs buckle under him as he slithered down onto the floor, draping the dish cloth over his head.

“I knoooooowww…”

“Honestly I’m amazed you’re still alive. You’re a fucking idiot, Lance.”

“Tell me about it, bro…”

Oh, Hunk could tell him all about it. Lance had a sharp eye and a good instinct for people, but there was this massive blind spot that popped up whenever his heart got in the way. He loved too easily, but often forgot that other people might just love him back. It had a habit of getting him hurt on the rebound, but, being Lance, he never let it keep him down for long.

At least, he never let it show.

Rather than berate Lance, Hunk decided to change the subject.

“How’s the cat treating you?”

He nodded towards a small crate in the far corner of the room, almost entirely covered by a blanket. A pair of eyes shone out from the darkness within.

“I dunno. Keith didn’t say why he wanted me to take her, she’s so in love with all his cats.”

“Rosso is ill.”

“Oh. And… he doesn’t want the others to catch it?”

“I guess so.”

“So I’ll have to give her back in the end?”

Hunk smiled, knowing that tone of voice.

“See, you’re already in love with her.”

“Well, you know me. I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”

That was certainly true, Hunk had seen it happen over and over. The change in tack had produced the desired effect. Lance smiled as the cat responded to her name.

“Hello Blue! Pretty Blue!”

She mewled and poked a paw out of the cage’s front grille, hoping for freedom. No chance.

“Do I just give her the same food you give Pudding?”

“Oh hell no, he’s on a strict diet. At least, he is when I’m watching. Blue probably eats regular cat things, you’ll have to ask Keith about it.” Hunk took the last dry plates from the dishwasher and filed them on their shelves. “If he ever re-emerges.”

 

They hadn’t seen him in days. In any other group of friends, the sudden absence of one was a cause for concern. And they were concerned, but they’d known Keith for far too long to be worried enough to go looking for him yet. He just needed a little time alone.

  


 

Far up on the hill, there was no more work to be done today. Keith turned off the lights and pulled the garage door closed, leaving a two-foot gap where he could sit and watch the stars as they winked into life over the city and the sea. He draped the blanket over his shoulders, making sure the little box on his lap was sheltered from the cool night wind. Its inhabitant sneezed.

“Sorry, love,” he replied, soothing his elderly friend with a hand on her forehead. “Not much longer now…”

Rosso had adopted him, around the same time as Hunk’s mother had done the same, and they’d both been taken in and treated like true-born family. A street kitten with a bent tail and a torn ear, her rusty red coat already scarred and patchy, even at that young age. She had made a perfect fit with Keith, an anaemic little boy who gave most people the creeps, and had been his constant shadow for seventeen years, a very old cat indeed. It was inevitable that she would eventually come to the end of her days.

Inevitable, but still sad. She had still been tailing him everywhere as little as a week ago, but now it seemed all her gears had ground to a halt, her motors slowing all at once. She’d stopped grooming so thoroughly, her paws seemed constantly dirty and wet. Her nose ran. She barely left her bed. She sneezed again, and Keith pulled her favourite little cardboard box closer to his chest.

It seemed sensible to mourn her while she was still here, in a way. That way it wouldn’t hurt so much when she finally left. It was going to hurt either way. Better get used to it.

 

Keith’s eyes steadily adjusted to the dark, and the stars shone even brighter. There was still the afterglow of sunset on the horizon, and the moon hadn’t risen above the headland yet, but it would. Even so, it was bright enough for him to make out the shape of his hands, see the white flash on his shoes as he stretched his legs out before him, scuffing little valleys into the dust on the threshold. Rosso coughed. He stroked her neck, her coarse fur sticking up, dirt getting caught under his nails. She lifted her head and squinted at him, nudging at his palm for more contact, giving his fingers a brief lick as she settled down again, her little pink tongue still poking out.

An hour passed, the half-moon slowly rising like a spotlight on the town, shining bright into Keith’s face. The last dregs of sunlight finally drained into the sea, and his mind drifted back to the last time he’d been able to sit up through the night with someone else at his side. For a brief moment, Keith wondered if he would ever know that kind of intimate friendship again.

 

He wished it wouldn’t happen, but it did. He could keep the lights on and prevent it, but it would hurt so much more the next time. With his ancient cat purring unsteadily in his lap, Keith felt the cool blue light on his bare arms, but even at its brightest, it wasn’t bright enough. He felt his skin begin to crawl in the dark, and hoped, as he always did, that it would only last as long as the night.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

 

_“He keeps talking about going back to that little seaside town, Pidge. He’s pinned a photo of those boys to the office wall. What’s come over him? I thought he liked it here.”_

_“He does. But he’s been kinda stagnating since the whole arm thing, you must have noticed.”_

_“Of course I noticed, I live with him. And I'm his doctor.”_

_“Do you want to stop him?”_

_“No.”_

_“Why not?”_

_Allura delicately scooped whipped cream from the top of her hot chocolate, savouring its taste, considering her reply._

_“Because of the way he talks about it. It’s as though he’s fallen in love.”_

 

Interesting, Pidge thought, staring blindly through the screens of compiling code before her. Shiro wasn't one to fall in love. He had _loves,_ he got excited about every new space discovery, and still loved to chase adrenaline, though not as much as before, but he'd never turned his head just to look at someone unless it was in the script. He fawned over _physics_ more than people. He loved italian food. He loved _Luke Cage_ and _Sailor Moon_. He loved dogs.

She knew she was loved too, of course. But that wasn’t romantic love. It was the love that grew up between lifelong friends, blood of the covenant and all of that.

Her program ran its course and she passed it across to a smaller, clunkier laptop where it ran a simulation, showing how the Gundam head unit ought to respond to given commands. Everything seemed in order, but she’d have Ulaz look over it before she called it complete and passed the work over to him for good.

Shiro could do with a taste of love, she mused. He had been her other brother all her life, and she’d seen him go through the hell of physical trauma and stumble out the other side, directly into the open arms of PTSD and depression, which was worse. It was nice to see him acting more like his age again, and less like a stressed out middle aged man who was slowly letting anxiety win by attrition.

And at the other end…

 

_“Keith's been acting all cute since your guy came to stay.”_

_“Oh really?”_

_Shiro wasn’t home yet. Last time they’d spoken he’d been on a bus to Syracuse, grumbling all the way._

_“Yeah, he keeps staring off into the distance and asking his cats if Shiro's going to keep his promise.”_

_“What promise? Wait, cats plural?”_

_“At least four that I know of. Rosso, Pudding, Queenie and Blue. But Pudding still lives with me.”_

_An inquisitive meow interrupted Hunk’s call. “Yeah, big boy, I'm talking about you!”_

_“You think there's something between them already?”_

_“Like an attraction?” She could hear Hunk exhale slowly. “Yes. I think so. I mean I hope so. Keith spends all his time improving other people's lives and I gotta say it's just making him tired. But honestly, when Shiro was here he was a rocket, all sparkles and energy. Like he used to be.”_

_“And what was Shiro like?”_

_“He kept staring. You know, the way Lance used to look at you. Caught him doing it a few times. One time, I told Keith he was doing it and when Keith smiled back at him, he turned into a jellyfish or something, dropped all his gear and fell over.”_

_“Wish I'd seen that.”_

_“You gotta come visit sometime, too. I miss you, Pidge.”_

_“Miss you, too. And I have something for Lance.”_

_“Is it... a punch?”_

_“Haha, what gave you that idea?”_

 

Playing matchmaker would be morally wrong, Pidge decided, but on the other hand Keith's body language was unreadable if you weren’t in on the gag, and Shiro had spent so much time around the false praise of actors that he didn't believe any positive thing anyone ever said about him.

They might need a nudge. She wouldn’t force it. She’d just help to put them back in the same town and let them take it from there.

It might even make a change from talking to robots all day long.

  
  
  


Shiro held his tongue all through his meeting with the director, and for bonus points repeated the same trick three days in a row, listlessly letting the last threads of passion that had held him in this business drift away in the breeze.

Amoral nature aside, it was a total mystery how Sendak had remained in the film industry for so long. He was powerful, he was reasonably skilled, he had awards by the hundred and kept them on display, weighing down his shelves and papering his walls.

Except, if you looked closer, they all featured his name, but they weren’t all necessarily awarded to _him._

Pictures of the places Shiro had been sent to were circulated around Sendak’s inner circle, most of it bypassing the director himself and going straight to the people who actually did the work. A couple of questions drifted his way, but for the most part Shiro was free to scrutinise the decor. He squinted at one certificate, mounted just to the left of a framed oil painting of the director himself. So _that_ was where his arm-destroying stunt award had gone. He’d been looking for that for years! What a fucking nerve. Oh and there was the matching Oscar, and another one with Pidge’s name on it too. Bloody cheek. For the next three days, he focused all his attention on the statuette, willing it to levitate out of the cabinet and clout director Sendak in his massive ear. It didn’t budge. He’d just have to get Pidge to resort to subterfuge, as if she needed any incentive.

 

He left the final meeting in a daze, not having listened to anything Sendak was saying. He thought he caught the words ‘Austin’ and ‘recruitment’ and ‘those kids off the internet’ but had once again let it go straight to his voice memo while he tuned out and daydreamed of sunbathing in Estrella. He’d review the briefing later. He’d ignore it then, too.

This was the end.

Boy, it felt good.

 

“But what are you going to _do_ there?”

Matt was as sharp and direct as his little sister when he was fully awake. Allura had made the whole crew take a day off work, and Matt had responded in the only way he knew: by demanding everybody meet up for a drink. Unfortunately, once everyone had lined up their availability, this meant the only bar open was a jazz dive in the basement of a seedy hotel, so far out of their stomping ground it was practically in the next country. It was three in the morning when they _arrived._ And, truth be told, it wasn’t a bad place. The atmosphere was so thick with vape smoke and sweat that it could be used to insulate blast furnaces, but it was a strangely calm, chilled-out place, with good liquors compensating for the bad beer, and actual barstools at the bar, always a selling point for Matt.

So here they were, then. Matt and Pidge, Shiro and Allura, each with a differently coloured drink and an enormous platter of nachos to share. Shiro mulled over his reply to Matt’s question. It seemed like he’d asked it an hour ago.

“I don’t really know,” he said honestly. “I could probably do with not doing anything for a little while, you know? Just get back to being comfortable as myself.”

He was struck by a big-brotherly moment of concern when he saw Pidge with a genuine cocktail in hand and made an automatic grab for it. She lifted it out of his reach.

“I’m short, man, not underage.”

“Sorry,” Shiro grinned. That second hot scotch had really taken him by surprise. He was still feeling good from unofficially quitting, too. Matt continued needling him,

“I know you’re not exactly skint, but you’re gonna drive yourself crazy with no regular work.”

Shiro knew that. The irregular nature of his post-incident work was already giving him more stress than he felt was normal. He’d stuck with it because he wasn’t a quitter, rather than because he was still getting satisfaction out of it.

He did have savings. To be fair, he had a _lot_ of savings, even after voluntarily paying for all his time under Allura’s care, even after being out of work and receiving only royalties for almost a year at the start. And he’d got his compensation payout from the… the thing. Eventually. Some of it. It trickled into his bank account in drips and drabs as he ran back and forth around the globe, searching for places for Sendak to film and never actually seeing his reimbursements come in. Or his regular wages, for that matter. Or see any film be borne of his work. Somehow, Sendak had him in his pocket, bought if not actually paid for. At least the work had kept him busy. The worst thing about recovery had been all the hours with nothing to do.

But what else was he going to do now? As he’d realised earlier that week, he had no marketable skills. He was a walking, talking cyborg and it turned out that nobody cared.

 

“I’m going to take what I’m owed, and go to Estrella, and have a holiday,” he decided. “A real one this time, I want… I want to get fat and- and buy unfunny postcards, and grow my hair out and go surfing. And catch a tan. And then I’ll work out what happens next while I’m there.”

“You’re really set on this place, huh.”

“I felt so _welcome_ , it was great. It felt like going home.”

“Plus, he has a crush on Keith,” Pidge put in. Shiro pushed away from the bar so fast he stumbled off his barstool and nearly toppled to the floor.

“I do not!” yelled Shiro, who sure as hell did.

“You sure as hell do!” declared Pidge, who could read his mind and had absolutely no mercy.

Shiro felt betrayed. Allura, who always enjoyed a Holts-versus-Shiro debate, smirked around her straw. Her lips quirked up as she met Shiro’s eyes with a dangerous wink. _Treason!_

“What, you mean your Keith?” Matt clutched at his chest in melodramatic horror.

“Yeah, my Keith, from Garrison.”

“Oh, well. That makes sense, kinda? But Shiro, bro, you know it’s against bro code to date your little sister’s ex.”

It was as though a record scratched to a halt. The music in the club continued but the air around their little party fell silent. All three of them fixed their eyes on Shiro. And they were looking amused, which wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been. Matt looked like he was waiting for a punchline to land, Pidge was grinning, knowing that no matter what the result, she was going to come home with the crown. And Allura… was _planning something._

And then the punchline _did_ land, and left a crater.

_“Your ex?”_

“My ex, yeah. You know, as in dating?”

_“Dating!”_ Shiro failed to swallow the squeak as his voice cracked, pitching him almost as high as a startled Lance. He slapped his hand across his mouth, mortified. Pidge scooped up a fresh drink and waved it in his direction, its little green paper umbrella doing laps of the rim.

“Is this the bit where you get over-protective and totally old fashioned about me dating? Cos we can really skip that already, it was five years ago. I’m apparently more of a grown-ass adult human being than you’ll ever get to, ya big dumb stargazer.”

 

A _lot_ of drinks happened after that. Shiro’s famously low tolerance notwithstanding, he kept up with them to the bottom of every glass, and the sun was nearly coming up when they were finally ejected from the bar and poured into a pair of taxis, blissfully drunk, best friends for life, the whole deal. He’d spotted Allura making sure that every other drink was a soft one for everyone, but even so he must have drunk a pint of whisky all on his own. Even now she was pulling the crown off a hastily purchased bottle of coke, buckling it _with her bare hands,_ and pressing the cool glass to his lips. He drank it, gratefully. It was good to have a doctor on board.

“I really am a big dumb stargazer,” he mumbled, slurring his words as they moved up into the more high-class neighbourhoods. “I knew Pidge was-- was datingshh, sh, someone at the Garrison, saw her hanging out with someone with, with, with long black fur. Hair. But I mean it was _loooong_ black hair. Figured it was a girl, I guess. I guess. Never made the connection. Super observant, that’s me. I could stare at star charts for hours and, and hours but I couldn’t shee what was happening right in front of me.”

Allura was rubbing the back of her thumb against the nape of his neck. Soothing. Reassuring. Smiling, because she was enjoying herself at his expense, as usual. Quiet, because she was up to something. Gods, he was a massive waste of her time. Gods, she never looked anything less than radiant, and he’d seen her put down enough liquor to sink a barge. She pushed his hair out of the way and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead.

“Sun’s coming up,” He noted, as if he was the only one who could see it. “What’s the… what’s the plan for today, princess?”

“The plan starts with a good four to ten hours of sleep, for all of us. Then I’m going to help wrestle all your back pay out of your boss. And _then_ I have something I’d like you to try.”

“A new arm?” He’d liked the new arm.

“No.”

Oh.

“Is it a thing I can eat?”

“No.”

Hmm. He was hungry. He’d felt constantly hungry since Hunk’s amazing glorified fish and chips. It had been a wake-up call to how poorly he’d been feeding himself.

“Is it the sort of ‘something’ that the neighbours sent you that funny complaint letter about?”

“Could be!”

Oh boy. That had been something alright.

“Sounds great,” he mumbled as Allura let him rest his head on her shoulder. “Wake me up when you need me.”

 

He woke up in bed, in his favourite pyjamas. No question of how he got there, Allura was more than capable of throwing him across a room — the bruises had been impressive — so lifting him was no ordeal.

He checked the clock. It was coming up to noon, so he’d had six hours of solid sleep. His head felt a little heavy, but, amazingly, nothing like a real hangover. He washed the vape smoke out of his hair and sought out food, stealing some of Allura’s fruit salad and making do with green tea, as all the coffee was gone.

Then he flopped on the sofa and flicked through his phone. Photos of last night reminded him of what a _good_ night it had been, hanging out with the people who knew him best, who knew how to make him laugh and smile, get him blissfully drunk and then tuck him into bed before he could get into trouble. He scrolled backwards through photos from Madison, Detroit, Syracuse, Boston, and finally found himself looking back on Estrella. It really was a beautiful place. It really had felt like going home. He found the photos which inexplicably contained a massive black cat, and the ones he’d taken over dinner, Lance sticking out his tongue as Keith rolled his eyes, Hunk balancing four laden plates with practiced ease. One, just one, from the beach. The back of Keith’s head just as he turned away, black hair breaking around the shell of his ear, the empty popsicle stick pressed against the barely visible smile, the out-of-focus sea shining, teal green waves crumbling into foam against yellow cliffs. It was beautifully framed, considering he’d taken it without any thought. He stared at it until his phone screen faded to black, then lay back on the sofa and let the memory carry him back into sleep. _He has a crush on Keith._ He must have. Otherwise, why would he have tried to take that photo in the first place?

 

Some hours later, the sound of the front door being unlocked startled him out of a beach-centric dream, and he hustled to look a little less dopey as a very business-like Allura hauled a large steel suitcase into the room and balanced it on the coffee table, knocking an empty fruit bowl to the floor.

“Medical equipment? Oh!” Shiro gave a soft gasp of hope, “Is this for me?”

“It is,” Allura said, bending down and removing her heels with considerably more care than had been afforded to the bag. “But it’s not the arm, Colleen is still working on the sensitivity in the fingertips. And I still need to make the shock protection for it, that’s the last thing. Tomorrow, I promise,” she said, as Shiro popped the suitcase open and stood back, in case it might explode.

It was full of paper.

Payslips. _Cheques._

It was full of _money._

“Be honest with me. You've started robbing banks? Do we need to skip town?”

“I went to see Sendak. Took my best serious business face, and Slav. It should be all your back pay, reimbursements for all your expenses, and I made him hand over a few other things, too.”

A few other things, like all the awards he and Pidge had earned. The oscars gleamed, like a promise fulfilled.

“You used Slav as a distraction.”

“I asked Slav to talk legalese while I looked imposing. Sendak didn’t even question it. I told him you were retiring, effective immediately. His legal advisor would like to remind you that you are still technically in his employ until they wrap on all your current projects, but no further work is required of you. Although he did rather suggest they were more likely to be cancelled.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised. Is it weird for me to feel a bit disappointed about that?”

“Because your hard work has gone to waste? Not at all. I’d be _livid.”_

Shiro had long since exhausted his supply of righteous anger. It took so much energy. These days he preferred to simply let it slide, but this had the side effect of making people think they could take advantage of him.

They could, and they _did,_ and worst of all, he knew and he just let it carry on.

That would change. Hopefully. At the very least, it would happen in a nicer locale.

“Don’t dwell on it, Shiro, it’s over now. And to celebrate, I also bought you a present. Eyes closed,” Allura said, and waited until Shiro had closed the suitcase and put it aside before laying something heavy into Shiro’s open palms.

“It’s… a black cardboard box,” he said, turning it over. He recognised the label. Its immediate effect was a cherry-pink blush that bloomed up his face like a warning. “Oh.” Its secondary effect was the feeling of a blush on the inside of his stomach.

“Want to try it out?” Allura’s question had teeth in it.

“What, right now?”

“Why not? You’re free, I’ve got nothing else planned today, and I’ve got an itch,” Allura said, standing and peeling the sharp white blazer off her shoulders and unzipping her pristine pencil skirt, letting it relax about her hips. She reached down for Shiro’s hand, leading him up off the sofa and directing him into her bedroom as he fumbled with the box, chortling like a schoolboy at first, and then giving out a low _oho, nooooo_ as the obscene object was tipped out onto the covers and lay there like a cross between a promise and a threat.

“Allura,” he began, casting the box aside and gesturing first at the object and then at himself.

“Shiro,” she said sweetly.

_“Princess,”_ Shiro asked, as she reached for his hips and piloted him onto the bed, “I’m not complaining– I wouldn't _dream_ of complaining but, I have questions? Starting with: why are _all_ your sex toys purple?”

  
  
  


It was three days later, and it was three in the morning again, and Pidge was _still_ giving him that knowing grin. They had called in Antok and Ulaz and their crews, and finished all the Gundam frames in double time, unions be damned. Then Pidge had packed her favourite laptops and gaming consoles into a huge, moving-house suitcase, and Colleen had told Shiro in confidence that she’d had to remind her daughter to take clothes and a toothbrush as well.

The departure lounge was well populated despite the small hour, standing room only as a hazard on the runway delayed their take-off. Shiro shifted his weight onto his other leg, became aware that Pidge was watching him, and immediately felt self-conscious about his change in stance.

“Learn something about yourself, huh?”

“Pidge, please.”

“Allura says you gasped like you were drowning.”

_“Please!”_

Allura and Pidge were an absolute horror. What a treasure, too, he thought, because those two had seen him at his absolute worst, a mangled sack of bones and fear, and had scooped him up and lovingly moulded him back into shape. And they hadn’t stopped since, they still cared. They still loved him, he could feel it in the way they stroked his hair, or punched his ribs, or called him a colossal idiot.

They still gave him shit when he deserved it. Allura had earned that right, Pidge had been born with it. They made a wonderful contrast to all the hard-lined bravado and straight up lies he’d had to wear to work.

He shouldered his ever-meagre bag and turned towards the gate as their flight number flickered onto the departures screen. Behind him, Pidge heaved her suitcase onto its rollers with a grunt and followed. The trunk was almost as tall as her, it knocked people out of its path like a snow plough, and the boarding desk made an alarming _beep_ as she forced it through the narrow gate.

It had been six weeks since he last saw it, and now Estrella was only five hours away. It felt like going home.

  
  


They had expected to see Keith waiting to collect them, but as they dragged their luggage out onto the salt-speckled tarmac, it was Hunk who hailed them instead, coming across the runway to meet them off the plane.

Pidge leaped into his arms, the way she’d greeted Shiro’s return, and Hunk hoisted her up into the air like a toddler, swinging her around.

“Man, it’s great to see you both,” he said. And then the smile suddenly slipped from his face. Shiro felt the change in mood, as though the sun had dipped behind heavy rainclouds.

“I’ll be honest, you’re not at fault, but today really isn’t a good day,” Hunk continued, leading them towards a classic Bentley and somehow managing to lift Pidge’s suitcase into the trunk without any visible effort. “I’ll explain on the way. You don’t need to do anything, you just need to be told.”

 

Shiro remembered the cat as Hunk described it, it had been the wiry one that had hitched a lift home with him that night. Pidge remembered it too, from the time it had followed Keith to college, smuggling itself into his bags, determined not to be left behind. She told Shiro of how it had almost got Keith into serious trouble, and it was only because Rosso didn’t actually _do_ anything other than follow him around that Keith was allowed to keep her in barracks.

Rosso had been like a mother to Keith, Hunk said. That didn’t sound quite right.

“No really,” Hunk said. “I mean like a mother. I really do. That’s the kind of connection he has with her.”

 

Hunk took them along the top road that overlooked the town, taking the same route that Shiro had found himself on at the start of his previous visit. The observatory was indeed fenced off, surrounded by the kind of temporary wire fencing that never stayed anywhere for less than two years. Up ahead, the wind farm - no, now that Shiro was looking out for it, it was more than just a few turbines. There was the garage itself, a small hangar with its turfed-over roof and painted doors, a scattering of outbuildings and whippy young trees growing sideways in the wind, a pile of dead cars stacked against one wall, and Lance, running down the track towards them, olive green jacket flapping around his waist.

 

“No good, man,” he wheezed as he clambered into the back seat next to Shiro. “She’s gone. He doesn’t know what to do. Hi guys,” he said, “Hi Katie.”

_“Nope.”_

“Really?”

Hunk put the car back into gear and it hauled itself up the track as elegantly as an overloaded vintage vehicle could. Lance squirmed like a scolded child, and Shiro could tell Pidge was glaring at him in the rear view mirror.

“Listen,” he said, leaning forwards and tapping Hunk on the shoulder, “maybe, if this isn’t the right time… you could just drop us in town? I know my way around, I could get us—”

“Nuh-uh, you’ve been requested. But you might not like what you see, so maybe stand back for now? He just wants to know you’ve made it here safe. Both of you,” Hunk added, with a smile in Pidge’s direction.

 

The garage seemed a lot bigger once they were up close. It loomed. Trees had been planted all around to protect it from the winds that powered the turbines, but the huge hangar doors opened right out to face the sea. It had an unparallelled view of the harbour and the great, wide ocean beyond, looking down on almost everything for miles and miles around; even the observatory was downhill from here. You could just about see the seafront, and the weathervane of the church, but the perilous drop that marked the top end of town was hidden from view.

Several very posh cars were lined up inside, in various states of undress, stripped down for repair or awaiting diagnosis. Bonnets were missing, headlights had been blinded, one had no wheels at all. A lumpy, misshapen form under a huge grey dust sheet could have been one of Pidge’s robots for all he knew.

And there was Keith, sitting on the doorstep, propped up against the wall and staring at nothing, looking like he hadn’t eaten or slept in days. A shallow, well-used cardboard box rested on his knees, his hand absently stroking something that Shiro couldn’t quite see.

 

Pidge got out of the car first, making a clear gesture for the others to wait behind her as she approached Keith and took a seat close beside him. He stirred from whatever state he was in and leaned towards her instead.

“Katie,” was all Shiro could hear him say, the rest dissolved into whispers between them. He folded his arms on the roof of the car, and kept his distance, and let them talk.

  
  


“Brought you a present,” Pidge said, shrugging one shoulder in Shiro’s direction. “Told you he’d come back. Can’t say I’m surprised, man, you always did like the beefy ones.”

“Can’t hide anything from you, can I?” Keith let himself smile, albeit briefly. It felt good to see Shiro again. More than anything though it felt so, so good to have Katie around. She was reliable in a way he couldn’t quite put into words.

She smiled back, matching his emotion in her own way, reaching into the box and placing her hand over Keith’s, as he stroked Rosso’s rough, red-brown fur, the poor animal already growing cold. “No, I know all your secrets.”

Well, Keith admitted, maybe that was true. At least, she knew all the secrets he knew himself.

“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed, “I’ve lost pets before but I’m really… She was special.”

“I know.”

“What do I do?”

He could predict the answer, but was having one of those days where he just wanted someone to lead him by the hand. Wanted someone to take this whole situation out of his hands, and take it away, and make it better, or at least let him forget about it.

“Let us help, first of all. We’ll bury her somewhere in the…do you have a garden?”

“An orchard.”

“That’s perfect. Let’s give her a sapling in the orchard, so you know she’s safe, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” She moved to squeeze his arm, just above the elbow, and Keith could tell by the way she hesitated that he was already starting to shake. His face prickled with the prelude to tears. He was going to cry. Not now, not in front of…

“Get Lance,” he choked, hands shuddering as he lifted the too-light box off his knees and passed it to her with reverence. “Please, I need—”

  
  


Pidge’s yell broke the entire scene. A bare moment later, Lance was kicking gravel up behind him as he raced to respond. Still seated on the threshold, Keith lifted his arms as Lance bore down on him, but rather than stopping to help him to his feet or sitting down beside him, Lance fairly threw himself on top of him, kneeling either side of Keith’s hips and holding him close, Keith’s face pressed in tight against his chest, Lance’s arms cradling the back of his head. Keith’s fingers clutched at his jacket, holding on. Pidge placed the little box on the ground and called out again,

“Hunk! Shiro doesn’t know!”

 

Shiro wasn’t ready for the noise. Keith let out a heart-rending wail, and despite being muffled in Lance’s embrace it still hit him like a landslide. His vision slipped out of focus, showing him two of the whole world, swimming back and forth and not quite overlaying properly. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes, willing the nausea to stop, but the sound was relentless. It vibrated through his bones and echoed in his head. His stomach boiled. It was like trying to stand immediately after a concussion, and he felt his legs quit in protest as a second note joined the noise, an unearthly harmonic that reached so far down into his sense of primal fear that it simply flipped the little switch that told him he was already dead.

Someone else was yelling his name, yelling for Hunk, and then he felt the world turn sideways—

  
  
  


“—entire pack of biscuits and call it dinner.”

“I can if I want to, you’re not my mom.”

“But, amazingly, you _are_ staying under my roof. I’m not gonna let you eat trash, I like having you alive. What do you fancy?”

“Reese’s cups.”

“Chocolate isn’t a food group either, Pidge!”

 

Ah, good. Pidge was on a sugar quest, so he probably wasn’t dead. Shiro tested the idea by opening his eyes.

He was fairly sure he hadn’t fallen asleep in the window seat at Violetta. It certainly smelled like Violetta, the combination of furniture polish and centuries of spilled liquor soaked into the floorboards gave it away. He turned his head, expecting it to ache horrifically but finding he had little more than a sore neck at the moment.

“I’m alive?” he asked, seeking peer review of his current theory.

“Oh hey, welcome back!”

Hunk’s cheerful call was good enough for confirmation, Shiro decided, and sat up. Then he tried standing up, but wobbled and sat down again.

“Um,” Shiro began.

“Don’t move,” Hunk warned him, hurrying over with a glass of water and a ramekin with a couple of plain white pills in it. “You took a spill and hit your head on the car door on the way down. It’s probably gonna hurt for a few days. We called your doctor but she said to tell you that you’re a klutz, and you should have two hundred mil co-codamol and plenty of water for your head.” He handed the items over to Shiro.

“Thanks,” Shiro mumbled, knocking the pills back and chasing them with the entire glass of water. “What happened again?”

“You banged your head.”

“Right, but before that? Keith was, uh, screaming I think, is he okay?”

“Not totally,” Pidge said, peering round Hunk’s shoulder as she tore into a packet of oreos, “but he will be. He’s out front with Lance.”

 

They had buried the cat already. Shiro had been out for almost three hours, and in that time they had buried Rosso in a space where an old tree stump had rotted and fallen over, and placed a heavy wheel hub over the top as a makeshift headstone. Lance was going to ask around his relatives to see if anyone had a sapling they could acquire to mark the grave, and they’d do the whole thing properly in the morning.

 

A small voice at the back of Shiro’s mind kept saying this was a whole lot of unnecessary effort to go through for a _cat,_ but he strangled that voice. It had no business speaking here. He’d helped to bury the Holts’ dog a few years before, and it had hurt. It still hurt, to go home and not hear Gunther barking at the door as he stepped onto the path.

Funny, he thought, he had cried over that dog as much as he had cried for his parents. Was that a bad thing? What did it say about him?

 

Lance and Keith were deep in some secretive conversation when he stepped out into the porch. He leaned against the door jamb and studied them, caught without observers, sitting on the wall of the patio. They sat with their feet dangling down over the pavement and their heads bent together, watching something on Lance’s phone. Keith had Lance’s jacket draped over his shoulders. It looked altogether far too big on him, and there were– there were _holes_ where he had been gripping it before, rips several inches long, and evidence, now that Shiro was looking at it, of holes that had been mended in the past. Expertly disguised as a design feature, but they were there. Undoubtedly, there would be fresh patches carefully laid over them in the next day or two.

“Please, Keith? Just once, so I don’t lose my touch.”

“I don’t think I can, though,” Keith said, voice hoarse with wear. “Fairly sure my spine can’t bend like that anyway.”

“It’s _fine,_ you just have to lean back, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“That’s what you said last time, right before you dropped me. ...I’m not wearing those shoes.”

“Keith, you’re too short to not wear the shoes.”

Keith’s elbow shot out and jabbed Lance hard in the ribs.

“Okay, fine! You don’t have to wear the shoes,” Lance conceded, a chuckle already rising in his voice, “but only if you agree to wear the dress instead!”

Keith gave Lance a shove strong enough to make him rock right over, overturning his drink as he put down his hand to regain his balance, but they were both laughing. That had to be a good sign. And yes, there was evidence of pain on Keith’s face, his skin red and puffed up where he had been crying, but he was clearly in good company.

Feeling that he wasn’t needed, Shiro turned to retreat back into the pub, and immediately fell over the world’s biggest, furriest black cat.

  


“You’re an embarrassment,” Pidge told him as she daubed antiseptic fluid against the fresh cut on his chin.

“I know, Pidge.”

“What I find interesting, though, is how you crack your head on a car door and just take a nap, but bean yourself on a doorknob and cut your face open. Again.”

“Last time was on set. I was working.”

“You were stepping out of the dressing room, Shiro.”

“That’s not the point…”

“It is though. Stop turning– Hey Keith? Go and stand over my other shoulder would ya? Shiro keeps turning towards you and it isn't helping.”

The muffled snigger from the Hunk and Lance corner of the bar didn’t go unnoticed. But, Shiro realised as the sticking plaster was carefully laid in place, his eyes did keep wandering back to Keith as he slowly stepped three paces behind Pidge, cradling the creature that had so recently been Shiro’s undoing. He just… he couldn’t help it. He wanted to look at him.

And Keith held his gaze.

“...Violet,” said Shiro, finally coming to a conclusion that had eluded him at their first meeting.

“If you say so. Most people just call me Keith.”

“Oh, uh, that’s not what--”

“I know what you meant, Shiro.”

 

And Shiro thought, _they’re beautiful._

And Keith thought, _shit, he realised._

 

“I’m going home,” Keith said suddenly, turning to Hunk and Lance and letting Queenie drop unceremoniously to the floor. “Got a backlog of work to do. I’ll feel better if I can smash something and bill someone for the time.”

“Sure, have fun,” said Lance, but followed Keith out of the door a few moments later, because Keith had still been wearing his coat.

Shiro stood to follow, but Hunk cut him off, stern as a rock, scooping Queenie back up and shoving her into his arms.

“Not you. I hear you’re thinking you might move to town. There’s a few things we’ll need to talk about first.”

 

It soon became obvious that Hunk was blustering, stalling to give Keith and Lance a clear getaway, but honestly, Shiro was tired and still felt queasy, and an enforced sit-down wasn’t going to hurt at all. He asked and received a coke with ice and lemon, and Pidge watched closely as he circumnavigated the cat, pulled the lemon out and popped it in his mouth, biting down on it, rind and all. She hated sour flavours and pulled a face, but managed not to look away. Shiro hadn’t felt so much under surveillance since he first came out of surgery, every nurse present on tenterhooks, watching him, ready to leap in should he try to do… something. Anything. Any action that might save his mind from the torture of still being in his half-a-body.

 

It was banal stuff. Hunk asked about credit ratings, residential history, medical and financial records, employment, education. Not that it mattered, he said, but they had to be able to find referees if the need arose. Half the time Pidge could answer for him, and did, and Hunk made notes and checked things on his phone, asking Shiro about what sort of place he was looking for, would he need a garage, would he need special access, would he like a garden or a studio loft? _Just kidding, it’s a dovecote, not a loft. Or you can have a literal barn with a hayloft if you don’t mind sharing with Lucia’s goats._

Queenie grew bored with Shiro’s lap and trotted away to stare at seagulls. The sticking plaster on his chin itched, the ice in his glass slipped as it melted, and almost twenty minutes had passed before Hunk finally looked up and asked, with a light quaver in his voice but no hint of humour on his face, if Shiro believed in aliens.

  



	5. Chapter 5

Did Shiro believe in aliens?

 

Really? This was Shirogane Takashi. This was Shiro, who had seen his own mother become a celebrated astronaut. This was a man who, as a kid, had been raised on classic _Doctor Who_ and _Star Trek_ and _The Sky At Night_ in almost equal measure. He still kept a ragged copy of _Rendezvous with Rama_ in his suitcase, had fallen asleep reading _Gil Hamilton_ so many times it should have been tattooed in reverse on his face. He’d studied astrophysics himself, trained to be a pilot so that one day he might chase stars himself. It hadn't happened as he'd hoped it might, but the dream, that never-ending desire to explore, _to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go,_ now _that_ had never died.

 

So did _he_ believe... in aliens?

 

Shiro huffed out a laugh, because what was this, a joke? What a ridiculous question, of _course_ he believed in–

The looks from Hunk and Pidge told him that it was no joke at all. They were hanging on his response, reading him, as though his yes or no might be the last word to pass his lips.

“Yes. I do,” he said, and his voice was even, because this was absolutely the truth. “Because it’s arrogant to think there’s no possibility of sentient life beyond Earth. I can’t even consider us being alone among the stars. And I... I don’t think I could bear it if we proved beyond doubt that we were.”

He stared Hunk down. Neither of them would budge.

“How does this affect my idea of moving to Estrella?”

Hunk gave in and turned his gaze to a glass-bottomed tankard hanging over Shiro’s head instead.

“It’s kind of a character test, I guess? To root out how you approach the totally unknown, kinda? Maybe?”

“You’re lying.”

“You can’t prove I am, though.”

“Just like I can’t prove there’s aliens? Or can’t disprove it? But I keep on with living and asking the question regardless?”

“Something like that.”

“You know,” Shiro folded his arms and leaned back, braced himself for the impact of his words, “For a mayor you sure are full of shit.”

Pidge snorted. Pidge knew no fear.

“I protect my people,” Hunk told him with a shrug. “I protect them, and if that means I have to turf you out, then I will. But I like you, anyway.” He stood. “I'm afraid dinner might be a miss tonight, I have a meeting with the energy company from the next town… I'll ask Shay to make you a reservation somewhere.”

Shiro tried to point out that Hunk didn’t have to be such a hands-on host in the first place, to which Hunk just tilted his head back and forth and said,

“No, but it’s an excuse to cook. And I like cooking and, as I said, I like you. And I know I’m not really the best Mayor, dude. I’m twenty-two. I just… I ended up here mostly by accident, but I’m doing as much good as I can, okay?”

Shiro could respect that. He knew what it was like, to lose your path, to land on your ass and have to make the most of it. Hunk was a masterful diplomat. A natural civic leader. He wore his neatly tailored suit with grace, even if he was clearly more a surf trunks kind of guy.

“You’re doing great,” Shiro said, and meant it. Pidge nodded her agreement. Pleased, and a little embarrassed, Hunk smiled down at his toes.

 

Lance’s long stride carried him along effortlessly, keeping up with Keith as he left the pub onto the seafront, turned towards town, and marched away, pace getting faster and more furious with every step.

“What’s eating you, man? I mean, apart from the obvious. I thought you’d have been really excited to see Shiro again, you haven’t shut up about him in weeks!”

Keith didn’t respond. He pulled the hood of Lance’s jacket up, completely framing his face, and strode on, not looking back, not looking up.

“Keeeeeith! Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind!”

Lance reached for the sleeve of his coat and brought Keith to a standstill, the two of them looking like kids frozen in a game of tag. Keith turned away again.

“What is it? Come on, I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s broken.”

“....can’t fix it…”

“What now?”

Keith shrugged him off, but didn’t move away.

“I’m really… struggling. It can’t be fixed. I can’t maintain it. He’s started to see through it, he’s going to find out—”

“Find out what? About you?” Lance stepped forward as Keith folded in on himself again, laid an arm across his shoulders and led him to the antique iron railing that stretched the length of the promenade.

They stood in silence for a few minutes, leaning on the rail and looking out towards the sea, until eventually, Lance said,

“Would that be so bad?”

Keith made a worried noise.

“I mean, you like him, right? So.”

“Liking him isn’t enough, Lance.” Keith huffed at the sea, shrugging out of Lance’s jacket and handing it back to him. “You’re lucky, you can pass even when your glamour is down. If mine fails, I look like something spawned from a nightmare—”

“—You don’t—”

“—I do! The eyes, the teeth? I’m—” Keith snapped his mouth shut and scowled at the horizon until his rising bad mood receded.

Lance pulled his jacket on and waited. He knew the way Keith’s thought process worked: obsess, fret, snap, and then deflect onto something that cheered him. Interrupting the process would only reset it, or make him lash out, which had historically resulted in an ambulance ride for the other party. Luckily, Keith had mellowed a lot since his early teens. He was sad today, but not in a fighting mood. And the thing that was most cheering right now was, of course...

“I think he’s… I dunno, cute. Handsome.”

“Buff,” Lance interjected. “Prime beefsteak.” It was worth the smack on the arm, to get even a small rise out of Keith.

“ _I get it_. And I get such a… just a really good, warm feeling in his company. But there’s no reason to believe he thinks of me that way. I’m dreaming, Lance. I’m just… I’m just dreaming.”

“Hey, nothing wrong with dreaming,” Lance reminded him, clapping Keith smartly on the shoulder in retaliation. “Speaking of which, I know you haven’t slept properly for weeks now. You want to crash at mine? Blue’s been missing you.”

He could see the concept crawl across Keith’s face, which was fun. Lance’s house was nice and cosy, his spare bedroom plush to the point of luxury. Except, it also served as a drop-in playhouse for all his younger siblings and cousins during the day, and hosted his giggling, gossiping friends and sisters at night. Blue _loved_ to play, and Lance lived there. No such thing as peace and quiet.

“I’ll pass.”

“Alright. You want a lift home?”

“No, thanks. I’ll walk it. I need the time.”

“Hey, Keith,” Lance called as his friend finally turned inland and took the first few steps towards home, “You made him promise to come back, right? You promise me you’ll come down tomorrow and see him. Okay?”

“Promise. I can’t wait to see what Pidge has got for you.”

That sounded good enough. A present from Pidge! That ought to be something to look forward to! Keith raised a hand in farewell and turned up an alley, silently vanishing into the maze.

 

A cheerful chime from his phone accompanied a text from Hunk:

_‘Shiro’s theory-positive. I’m at work til maybe 8pm. Night patrol? xH’_

Lance paused to take in the view once more, contemplating the idea of a late-night swim. Already moving into late afternoon, the sea beyond the harbour was rippling as the low tide began to turn, the planet’s skirts shifting as the moon danced around her. There were maybe two weeks of shorts-only swimming left to them. Summer was coming to a close, and soon the autumn tides would bring in new fish, then the dolphins and the orcas would follow on their way south, and the town would briefly fill with whale watchers. And then, just as the last leaves turned red and were whipped away, everything on land would settle and become still, and everything out at sea would quietly sink low, and wait for the winter to pass.

They called her Earth, although she mostly wore water. A beautiful blue marble, he’d heard, if you saw her from the outside. It had obsessed him so much, he _had_ to see if for himself, and forgot in the chase that she was _right here,_ she was directly under his feet, at his very fingertips. Holding him close, keeping him, keeping all his friends and family safe. Mother Earth. What a singular, wonderful planet.

There was a light tug at his sleeve. He didn’t need to turn to know who had sheepishly come back.

“...I’m sorry about your jacket,” Keith murmured, “...again.” Lance silently reached out to deliver the hug Keith was so obviously trying not to ask for. Keith’s hair tickled his neck as he rested his forehead on Lance’s shoulder. Hands clutched uncertainly at his back, but eventually unclenched and lay flat. He rubbed broad circles over Keith’s back, worried as always by how clearly he could feel his ribs and spine. A minute later, he heard a low sigh somewhere around his collarbone, and Keith’s torso relaxed.

“You really needed that, huh.”

Keith said nothing. In broad daylight, in the middle of town, and standing bolt upright, Keith had fallen asleep.

  
  


It was entirely possible that Hunk and Shay were in some kind of competition to be the world’s most efficient organisers. Hunk apologised to Pidge and Shiro for having to leave them at _Violetta_ , but barely two minutes after he had left, a private hire car appeared to collect them, the driver waving away their money as it was ‘all on Mr Garret’s account.’ Their luggage had already been delivered to the hotel, and when they arrived, Shay handed them their room keys with a pile of menus, a handwritten list of each establishment’s daily specials carefully paper clipped into each one.

Pidge chose Italian, because she wanted gelato. Shiro agreed, because he never said no to Pidge, or to real, made from scratch lasagna. Shay was already making the reservation before he’d put the menu down, dinner at six-thirty, and would they like to eat at the hotel or go to the restaurant?

 

They burned the rest of the day in town, being exactly the kind of tourists that people tut about. Lance’s elder sister offered them drinks on the house, and Pidge found the sweet shop because of course she found the damned sweet shop. Then they sat on the edge of the seafront road, kicking their heels against the stonework, stacking up their empty lemonade cans and both feeling out of sorts without any work to worry about.

 

“Nice place,” Pidge conceded, after a long break in the conversation. “Kinda hilly, though.”

“Right, ‘cos California isn’t hilly at all.”

“Yeah but. I don’t have any friends who live at the top of Mount Lukens. If I wanna see Keith one of us has to deal with _that.”_ She pointed over her shoulder. From this angle, the cliff looked almost vertical. “I’m not climbing _that.”_

“I’m not gonna carry you.”

“I figured. You know what’s funny about this town?”

A lot of things were funny about this town, Shiro thought.

“No river,” Pidge announced.

Well, he hadn’t considered that.

Pidge explained to him what the boys had once explained to her: there was no river, but there were numerous little freshwater springs. There was no river, and so the beach was one perfect, beautiful curve. The harbour water was always warm and full of plant life, so fish stayed around for longer. The town had thrived. There was no river, so when a bout of typhoid fever had nearly destroyed the river-side towns nearby, Estrella had remained safe, healthy in its isolation, uncontaminated because it didn’t have a river.

Fascinating stuff, he was sure. Just not of any particular interest to him.

“You know what I find strange about this place?”

“Go on?”

“I feel like I belong here.”

Not that California wasn’t home. The Holts had brought him up as one of their own, but now Japan was just a memory, and Hollywood was just a place where he woke up, went to work, went back to bed every day. It wasn’t what he would call living. He could see why the populace there was so obsessed with _lifestyle,_ that pseudo-life you pretended to have because you were too busy to actually have hobbies or interests. Gods, even life in barracks at the Garrison had been more genuine. And here, he felt like… a local. As though he’d only been away for a few days, and everyone was happy to see him and was asking after his health and offering to lend a hand, or to share their meal. Perhaps it was because it was such a small town, barely seven thousand souls, all of them in some way dependent on one another. They were a _community_ while he felt, deep in some bitter cavity of his soul, that other places merely had a population at best. And it suited him, this easy-going, open house kind of living. Hunk and Lance knew everyone, and everyone knew Hunk and Lance. Beach parties just _appeared_ and everybody was welcome. And not one person had looked at him, seen his arm, and said ‘oh you poor thing, what happened?’ Not one. So either they were incredibly polite, or they recognised that he wasn’t just trauma with a Shiro attached. He was still fundamentally Shiro.

He wanted to believe that Estrella was his own little slice of promised land, that maybe he was destined to come here. It had opened its doors to him and invited him to stay, and he _wanted_ to stay. Badly.

Pidge was talking. He re-tuned his thoughts just she came to some conclusion on her own:

“—has _got_ to be some kind of vegetable, right?”

“Right.” He had no idea.

“Right! So what I’m saying is,” and off she went again. The sun began its lazy descent towards the cliffs beyond Violetta, still beaming warmth down onto his skin, even as low clouds obscured it. He didn’t mean to zone out while Pidge was talking, but it happened on occasion. He closed his eyes and let the town in. The sun. The clean sea air. The low hubbub of people in the streets behind him. Kids on the beach. Dogs barking. Two vendors crying their wares. The smell of sesame oil frying somewhere down the road. Distant music drifting out of an upstairs window. The gentle rustle of leaves in the soft breeze. The occasional rumble of a car. The more common rattle of bicycles. Home, home, home. And when Shay bustled out of the hotel at the end of her shift, he could pick out the tang of spices in her perfume and the click of her shoes as she approached.

“Your reservation is in thirteen minutes, Mr Shirogane. Don’t forget now!”

She had moved on before he’d even opened his eyes again, smart suit blending in with the rest of the evening crowd. And Pidge was smiling at him. Not always a good thing.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ve just never seen you so relaxed. It’s a good look.”

“Thanks, I’m trying it on for size. Shall we eat?”

“Yeah,” Pidge said, hopping up and brushing sand from the backs of her legs. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

 

She ate _four servings_ of peanut butter gelato. He’d never seen her so pleased with herself.

 

Lance thanked his stars. He had been lucky. Hunk had passed his way with just enough spare time to deliver their sleeping beauty to Lance’s pad before he continued on to work. Keith didn’t look right, alone in the neat guest bedroom, but he was still tired enough to pull off his boots and his belt and go right back to sleep. Lance left him to it for a couple of hours, herding the kids out to the playpark to save everyone else from their rumpus. When he returned, he found Keith had made himself right at home. Every spare cushion in the house and even Lance’s own duvet had been acquired and piled up on the spacious bed, and the only indication that Keith was in that pile somewhere was the splash of inky black hair contrasting against an almost life-sized plush beluga whale. Blue had moved in on it too, perched like a neat grey cloud at the top of the mound, surveying Lance with her pretty lamp-like eyes as he quietly left the room.

Lance left him for another two hours while he went to dig a sturdy pear sapling out of his grandmother’s garden. Then he rather reluctantly shook Keith awake, handed him a box of sandwiches, and drove him up the hill to his own home, amazed that Keith was still tired to the point of collapse, but not _too_ tired to complain about the half-eaten chocolate bar in the cup holder, because _what even are you, Lance, some kind of animal? Clean your fucking car or I’m taking it away from you._

 

Keith froze as he stepped over the threshold. Lance felt a fleeting moment of panic, realising that for the first time ever, Keith’s home was completely empty of cats. It was silent. There was no chirp of enquiry, no patter of paws coming to see if dinner was on the cards. There was no Rosso. Pudding lived with Hunk, Blue was at Lance’s place now. Goodness only knew where Queenie went.

There was no Rosso.

Keith muttered his thanks, gave Lance a vague pat on the arm, threw his keys on the top of a filing cabinet, and plodded across the huge garage to his quarters, letting the door swing closed behind him, shutting out Lance and the rest of the world.

Lance left. There was nothing else he could do.

 

“He will be okay, though. Right?”

There was no reply. There was nobody to make a reply. Lance waited until Hunk surfaced, tipping a net full of live crabs into a basket hooked onto the harbour buoy.

“I said, Keith will be okay, right?”

“Eventually. Give him time, dude, he’s just lost an old friend. He’s got, like a whole five stages of grief to get through.”

Hunk adjusted his goggles and dove again, and Lance lay back on his board and kicked his legs in the water for a while, staring up at the clear patch in the middle of a cloudy sky. He could see Venus, bright for all her miles away. Beautiful. Not as good as Earth, though.

Hunk resurfaced and flashed his diving light at Lance’s face.

“Are you gonna help me or are you going to eat land food all week?”

Chuckling, Lance rolled off his tethered board and let his own weight pull him down into the water, following Hunk and the heavy chain that kept the buoy in position. The crabs loved this spot, for some reason. They practically climbed into the boys’ nets of their own volition. A few dozen feet to the west of the buoy, select rocks were the favoured homes of mussels and scallops, certain patches where the currents flowed in from the sea were prime fishing spots, if you liked certain fish. Inland was home to flatfish, the dabs that Hunk liked so much. Further out to sea, nurse sharks skulked around in the gloom, waiting for an unsuspecting Lance to put his foot down.

Not twice. He’d learned his lesson. The scar looked cool, but not cool enough to want a matching one on the other leg.

They went up for air a few times, tipping their catch into the crate and returning to the seabed for more. No point putting down a trap if the pickings were so easy. Better to come and get what they needed as and when, rather than set down a trap they might have no need to check. Better than having it fill up with sad crabs.

They could have left it all to Rolo of course, or to Plaxum and Luxia’s squad of divers, or to any of the two hundred-odd capable people who listed ‘fishing’ as either their job or their hobby. But then, they wouldn’t have The Excuse.

That was it, mostly. The _Excuse_. Hunk and Lance caught their own fish whenever they could, because nothing beat freshly caught seafood on the dinner table. Hunk needed it for the hotel, Lance loved it at the bar and for his family. It was an excuse to go surfing, or fishing, or just swimming. It was a reason— a _need_ to be out here, away from the land. Heavens knew they weren’t thinking of leaving their town. It was right there, occupying a whole third of their horizon the same way it always took up one third of their minds. As they watched, its little lights flickered out as the people closed up shop and households tucked their children into bed, until all that was left were the few restaurants and bars that served late into the evening, and the ever-present lamps of the Garret Hotel. The sun had long since vanished over the cliffs that protectively encircled this little town, the sky washing itself of colour until nothing was left but purple and grey, the clear patch of blue right over their heads feeling like a gateway to another universe.

“Look, at Guiseppe’s.”

“I see them,” Hunk said. Pidge and Shiro, clear as day, even at this distance, even without much daylight left.

“I’m glad they’re here,” Lance murmured. “I’ve missed Katie.”

“Shiro wants to move in.”

“Did you uh, pop the question?”

“I did. We’re getting married in April next year, bring your friends… he says he couldn’t bear it if humans were alone.”

“Good job they’re not, then.” Lance leaned back into the water, breathed in, breathed out, and let his glamour down.

 

That was another reason for the excuse. At this time of night, this far out to sea, nobody would be looking, so nobody could care.

He really didn’t change much. His skin was still dark, his hair was still curly and brown, his eyes were still an unexpected blue. His ears were still cute, or at least he thought so, but without the glamour they returned to their natural, delicate, pointed shape. Just below his eyes, faint markings glowed in the falling dark, little ovals of aqua-coloured light. They matched the marks on his wrists and shoulders, the long lines that ran down the backs of his calves, briefly interrupted by a shark bite scar. He was lucky, he knew, that his glamour didn’t cost him any effort, that he didn’t change very much. He knew it was vain of him, but he was quietly pleased that he maintained a good level of _attractive_.

Even if Hunk was the only one to ever see this version of him.

“That is still the coolest thing,” Hunk told him, appreciatively.

“What, the scar?”

“No, dummy, your plain form. It’s kind of a waste to hide it.”

“Aw, thanks babe. I love me too.”

Hunk chuckled at his reply, and that was that. Nothing more to be said.

 

Lance let his body sink a little, drifting just below the surface as he gazed up fondly at the stars. A moment passed with nothing but the flow of the wind and the gentle waves, Lance feeling safe, cradled by the water, listening to the planet as she breathed, and put herself to sleep.

Lance was ready for bed. Hunk sounded tired, too, the stress of the day evident in his voice as he quietly asked,

“Hey… you mind if I vent a little bit?”

 

Hunk had had quite a day. The meeting with the energy company had been almost futile. Their CEO, Cameron Ryker, was cheerfully buying up property in Estrella, looking to make a foothold so he could move his offices here. He wanted to supply Estrella with good, clean energy, he said. Hunk said thanks, but we already have our own solar and water and wind farms, and they supply us with more than eighty percent of our needs.

So there were still brown-outs, Ryker said. He could fix that, he said.

And Hunk said that may well be true, but there wouldn’t be much point if he had bought so many houses that nobody lived in the town any more.

And then Ryker had laughed, _haha,_ because he had the right to buy property wherever he liked and Hunk couldn’t legally stop him.

And that made Hunk worried, because a man who is only interested in the value of his assets is not a man you want to be relying on for basic amenities. He had left the meeting feeling somewhat shaken, with only one plausible course of action to take.

He had to buy all of Estrella.

 

“Don’t you already own like one fifth of it?”

Technically, true. One fifth of the town proper was build on the ancient Garret estate. Everything to the east of the hotel, more or less. The land belonged to his mother by birthright, and therefore technically to him, and they had to be consulted or informed about major changes. He and his mother had the right to veto planning applications, but rarely needed to. Mostly they just checked in to make sure everyone had a well-maintained roof, and helped to pay for small, necessary purchases. Like washing machines, or school uniforms. Hunk’s mother would waive rent for people in a bind, often for six months or more. They wanted to be good landlords. They looked after their people. And it was contagious.

“Hunk, I hate to say this but I don’t think you can just buy a whole town, buddy.”

“I met a man today who thinks differently.”

They thought about this.

“That would make _everyone_ a tenant to you.”

“There’s several hundred households that are already my tenants. Keith’s my tenant. _You’re_ my tenant four times over.”

“I pay my rates four times over, too.”

“I don’t need— Lance, it’s not about the money.”

“Great! I’ll take it back and buy a yacht.”

Hunk’s foot came up to give Lance a shove in his side, and he bobbed away, laughing at the sky,

“For serious though, what an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed, and he could say this because of The Excuse. Out here, away from land, nobody could overhear their mayor as he declared the CEO of a major corporation to be a creepy, soulless, gold-eating douche. And a poorly dressed one at that.

“Sunglasses inside. In a meeting.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“ _So_ unprofesh.”

“Totally gauche.”

There was a pause, and then they both started laughing, just because they could. It was a pressure release, a sign that there was no more serious business at hand.

Lance dove again, enjoying the residual warmth of the water, blowing out a chain of bubbles as he passed under Hunk’s back and came up on his other side. Puffing the water off his lips, he gasped,

“You do know— you understand, you’re better than he is, right?”

“I sure hope so,” Hunk said, unsure. “I try, but who knows?”

“Your people," Lance promised him, sliding in close as Hunk tipped himself upright. “Your people know. I know. They trust you, and you’re a good man, for all your kindness. You’re a good man.”

Hunk shivered under Lance’s fingertips, his sides prickling into gooseflesh as the water cooled and numbed his skin.

“You’re a good man, Hunk.”

And because this was Lance saying so, Hunk believed it.

“I wish you could quit being mayor, though.”

“Why? You voted for me.”

“You were the best candidate. No, it’s just so that I could have you back as a full-time best friend. I know it’s greedy, but… you know.”

Hunk knew. He scooped Lance towards him and pressed their foreheads together, nose to nose, the soft opal glow of Lance’s markings faintly illuminating the small space between them.

“It’s not forever, Lance. It’s for the greater good.”

_“Movie reference.”_

_“Sarcastic response.”_

“And when you’re done, then you’ll give me that reply, right?” Hope and futility sang a perfect chord in Lance’s quiet voice.

“Nah, don’t see why I should make you wait that long,” Hunk whispered, fingers brushing lightly against wet hair at the back of Lance’s neck. He leaned in, and the world around them fell away until there was nothing, no sensation at all, but the warm, soft press of Lance’s smile against his own.

 

Which meant, of course, that neither of them saw the first flash of the light.

 

Shiro saw it, a few hours later. His body was still operating on the old two-sleeps regime, and he wasn’t in a hurry to change out of that. He’d tumbled into that same big, luxurious bed with glee, full of lasagna and ready for sleep. And he had woken up four hours later, and remembered to take his phone with him for his 2AM jog this time.

The bright flash caught in the corner of his eye, and he paused outside a darkened florist to look up at the cliff.

It flashed again, a minute later. Bright orange at first, then white.

He took out his phone and pointed it at the source, hoping to record whatever might happen next. The cloud cover over the pitch dark town made it nearly impossible to make out the shape of the land, discern where Earth ended and sky began, and when the light flashed again, it blinded the phone’s camera, filling the screen with white before fading back to solid black.

Frowning, Shiro steadied his grip and started counting under his breath. The next pause between flashes was longer. Was it a code? Who were they signalling? A brief glance at the horizon yielded no lit boats in the harbour, no larger vessels out to sea. Shiro turned back to the cliff, staring, willing his eyes to adjust so he could just see where the light was shining from.

It didn’t come again.

He moved on into the silent town, listening to his phone as it guided him along his run, finally navigating the warren of narrow alleys and lanes on his own without getting hopelessly lost.

When he returned to the comfort of the big hotel suite, he took a moment to leave a note for himself, to tell Pidge in the morning and see if she could make anything of the video, before finally stripping and showering and crawling back into bed.

His pulse slowed, his breath evened out. He dreamed of running, fast as a swallow, feet hardly touching the ground. He was chasing a star as it cut across the sky, its long tail roaring as it burned, a trail of embers in its wake.

 

From somewhere in the night, the black cat came. Silent as the grave, she found the warmest spot against Shiro’s side and curled up, purring against the steady rise and fall of his chest, and dreamed of chasing mice.

 

“I really don’t know how she does it,” Shay apologised the next morning. “It’s like she can walk through walls. I’m so sorry, Mr Shirogane.”

Waking up next to a cat wasn’t a problem. Trying to eat breakfast when Queenie had decided his lap was The Place To Be, that was a problem. She kept stealing his omelette. Eventually he tipped half of it onto a side plate and placed it on the floor for her, whereupon she immediately turned her nose up at eggs entirely and went to bother Pidge for the cream jug. The content lapping sound was accompanied by Pidge shifting her tablet out from under heavy paws, muttering _could you maybe fucking not?_

 

Every spare scrap of table that wasn’t currently occupied by cat or crockery was covered in pieces of paper. Pidge was formulating a plan of action, her scratchy but legible handwriting sprawling across page after page torn out of her notebook, all of it being steadily processed and condensed down into three pages only, three neat, bullet-pointed lists.

The first and longest was titled _Things Shiro is Good At_ and contained such gems as ‘unintentionally flirting with medical staff’ and ‘lifting furniture’ alongside more useful things borrowed from his work resume. He could ride both bikes and horses, had a valid if barely used pilot’s licence, had good stamina and had trained in several martial arts disciplines. He was good with children despite not knowing how or why. He had the patience of a saint, and was still well-versed in astronomy and astrophysics.

Pidge had bracketed the last three points and added a side note - _maybe teaching?_

The second note was called _Things Shiro Needs_. So far it simply said _cooking lessons_ and _a dog._ Queenie was sitting on it. Shiro suspected it was in protest.

The third list was rather crumpled, had been titled _Things Shiro Wants to Do,_ and had the word _Ke-_ interrupted by a long black line where Shiro had spotted what Pidge was about to write and had whipped the paper out from under her. He’d resolutely shoved it under his plate and given her his best glare. It didn’t work. It never did. She just countered it with her wicked grin and went back to re-writing his résumé, copying it up on her tablet while Shiro hid his face behind his coffee cup and sighed.

 

It wasn’t right, waking up in a house with no cats. It wasn’t right.

Routine, that was the thing, wasn’t it? Don’t get stuck in a mire.

Stretch first, shake the sleep out of his bones. Shower next, temporarily scrub the smell of petrol out of his skin. Get half-dressed, just jeans and a tee for now. Hair up, kettle on. Measure out half a day’s ration of dry food.

No, no...

Find shoes. Safety first. Walk across the garage, pick out a nice length of exhaust pipe from the storeroom, raise it up high and bring it down hard onto the concrete floor, again and again until it buckled and broke.

Pour the cat food back into the tub. Best not be wasteful.

He thought he’d already run out of tears. Oh well. Seemed like his body just kept on surprising him.

 

Lance let himself in, because he always did in the mornings. He wandered across the garage into the tiny, five-foot square kitchen, made a casual nod in Keith’s direction and placed an oven-fresh loaf of bread on the counter. He cut two generous slices and toasted them, found butter and jam, a knife and two plates, then fetched his own mug out of a cupboard and turned to pour the coffee. He paused. He looked at his host.

“Keith. New diet?”

“No. Do come in, make yourself at home why don’t you.” Keith slumped onto the kitchen stool, arms folded defensively, another night of bad sleep written across his face. “I’m still on the ‘whatever Hunk and Lance feed me’ diet, why?”

“You forgot to put coffee in the coffee pot.”

Keith closed his eyes and breathed out, very, very slowly.

“I haven’t really had a good morning, Lance.”

“Yeah, I saw the wreckage. I’ll make the coffee, shall I?”

“Please.”

“Milk?”

“No. Five sugars.”

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“You know we’ll look out for you, buddy. You’re gonna be okay.”

 

Keith ate the toast and jam that Lance handed to him, then sat by the back door to the orchard, hugging his second cup of sweet black coffee as Lance dutifully took up a spade and laid the pear sapling carefully in place. It was funny, knowing this side of Lance, it was like being in a secret club. He played a fool, for sure, but he was also attentive and generous, just like Hunk. He knew how to handle garden tools, goodness knew how. He knew how to heel in a sapling and water it well. Fastidious as he was about his appearance, he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, especially to help out a friend. They’d all grown up together. Keith hoped he had those qualities, too.

Lance eventually called Keith over to tamp down the earth and lay the cut turf back in place. Keith ought to do it, he said. It was his task to do. It would help, he said. Not immediately, but in the long run. Keith had to put the full stop in place.

He cried while he did it, but in a way he did feel better. Funerals were really for the living, after all.

 

“Drink up,” Lance told him half an hour later, handing over a fresh cup of not-so-sweet coffee. “You promised you’d come down to town, remember?”

“I look like hell, Lance.”

“Yeah, like he’d care. Go wash your face and dig out that old leather jacket, you know, the one that makes you look like an anime boy.”

“I thought you hated that thing.”

“It’s hideous. It suits you.”

Keith scoffed.

“And then I’m gonna need a lift down the hill. You keep bitching about my ride being a mess; you can give her a valet.”

Keith shrugged. Fine.

“We’re taking the Ducati.”

“Oh no, now that’s something I really _do_ hate.”

 

“Dunno,” Pidge said, automatically sending the video file to her tablet so she could work on it and handing the phone back to Shiro. “It _could_ be a signal. What do you make of it?”

“Doesn’t seem regular enough to be a signal,” Shiro said, taking Pidge’s elbow to steer her away from an oncoming bicycle. “The bursts of light are too irregular. It could be the light of someone welding, maybe? But it’s too infrequent for that, I think.” And you couldn’t see the garage from the town. He knew, he’d looked for it.

He _wasn’t pining._

Pidge stopped in the middle of the cobbled street to play Shiro’s footage again. He waited. This was her element, this was where Pidge had evolved out of Katie. Electronics and robotics and radio and code were in her soul. He could remember, almost to the hour, the day when she stopped caring about what her classmates thought, gave her teacher two middle fingers, and accepted her Garrison offer, two years ahead of time. Now she floated in the haze of data like a seraph, seeing everything, understanding everything, controlling as much as she could. A goddess of cryptography.

“It does look metallic,” she agreed, “the way the light changes colour like that. But that’s no guarantee that it is, of course. I’ll spend some time with some maps and triangulate its source, I think that could go a long way to explaining it.”

It was a good start. Again, Shiro reminded himself, this really wasn’t his business. If anything this was a mystery for Hunk to worry about, but he’d found it, and now it weighed on his soul.

 

They had planned to find the civic museum, but now found their path blocked as they turned up Old Market Street. A crowd had gathered, and the unmistakable whiff of journalism was in the air, a number of cameras, large and small, all pointing to one innocuous door.

They could try going around, but then they might end up lost. Or worse, they could miss a show. And then Shiro heard the rumble of a motorbike making its approach, and scanned over the heads of the crowd until he found it, a bright white motorbike coming down the hill, its pillion passenger leaping off as they approached the crowd, pulling a helmet off to reveal Lance, who pushed through the crowd and gaped at the door, phone pressed to his ear.

Apparently nobody answered, as he pocketed his phone and started looking around. Spotting Shiro, he made his way back into the press of bodies just as his driver kicked the bike back into gear and disappeared into a side street.

 

“Shiro!”

“Morning, Lance.”

“Kat- sorry. Pidge!”

“Oh, it’s learning!”

Lance beamed.

“You haven’t seen anything, have you?” he asked, turning his attention back the house. “I got an SOS from Hunk at this address, then nothing.”

Nobody had been in or out, Shiro confirmed, but they had only been there a couple of minutes. On the other hand, if somebody had come out, they wouldn’t have known who to look for.

Lance bounced on the spot, hopping from foot to foot with concern, rolling up on his toes to get a clearer view of the door, phone clamped to his ear once more.

A small pressure on the small of Shiro’s back was the first indication that Keith had joined them, three fingers finding the exact same spot he had found before. Shiro expected, as he turned, to meet the same soft, tired expression. He wasn’t expecting to come face to face with a knife in human clothing.

“Hey,” was all Shiro managed. It was enough, apparently. Keith smiled.

“You came back.”

“I wanted to. You look good.”

“Some days I look even better.”

For a split second Keith’s smile almost turned into a grin, the flash of his teeth momentarily snaring all of Shiro’s attention before they vanished behind his lips again. The sight left a prickling feeling up the back of Shiro’s neck, another primitive, instinctive reaction.

At least he didn’t pass out this time. Small progress. Keith’s hand was still on his spine.

 

Movement at the windows of the house sparked a low hubbub in the crowd as the door eased open, just an inch. Cameras rose once again, a number of people tried to move forward, closer to the door, while half a dozen policemen politely asked them not to do so. Shiro stooped automatically as Pidge put a hand on his shoulder, helping her climb up his back for a better view with her tablet ready and waiting in video mode. The boys both produced their phones too, their chimes sounding discordant against one another.

“You get that?” Lance asked, glancing sideways at Keith.

“Yeah. _‘Watch them.’_ Doesn’t sound like a good time.”

They watched, as instructed, as the front door to the house opened and two men stepped out, followed by Hunk, with his hands in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to my beta - although I sure as hell hope they don't find out what my online moniker is.  
> For someone who eats little but indiscriminately, I sure can talk about food...
> 
> Tags and warnings will be updated with each chapter and will absolutely change as the story progresses. If you think I should add a specific tag, let me know in the comments or send me a note. Thanks for reading!


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